


See You Again

by bluespring864



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Coming Out, Developing Relationship, Future Fic, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-15 17:38:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 35,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16068029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluespring864/pseuds/bluespring864
Summary: Shoma comes to a realisation about Javi, but his timing really could be better. So, what now? They'll figure it out somehow. Even if that relationship-stuff is quite complicated, and Shoma was never one to make life easy for himself.Javier was open, for better or for worse, and therefore, he was incredibly connected.When Javier Fernández skated, you were always on the ice with him.And today, he was skating his last senior competition.Nobody had told Shoma, certainly not Javier, with whom he’d never exchanged more than a few words. He’d not read it in the press, either.He saw it in every line of Javier’s body, in the way he looked around, in the way he bent down to touch the ice, like Yuzu always did, but with a small, wistful smile.Shoma was suddenly very glad he was here.[Complete]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, well, I think I'm not the only one to notice the stunning lack of fics for this pairing, but I'm the one who decided to do something about it... And that something developed into a 35000 word chaptered fic. I'm still editing the later chapters a bit (some of them are quite dialogue-heavy; I apologise in advance should I not manage to improve on that) but the fic is done, and will be posted a chapter a day (10 chapters + epilogue).
> 
> I invented a competition in the beginning because I didn't want to have the results contradicted by reality soon, but then the fic also decided to go to Worlds 2020, so there's definitely some pure speculation about that competition's results and who'll take part in it.
> 
> The title's from Shoma's exhibition. 
> 
> Translations for Spanish parts (and a tiny bit of Japanese) will be at the end of each chapter. If I've messed something up, corrections on that (as well as for typos etc.) are definitely welcome!
> 
> As always, kudos, thoughts and comments would be very nice :-)
> 
> Oh, and also, as always, my RPF is locked. You may, of course, recommend it, or even mail the epub to friends who don't have an AO3 account. I just don't want it somewhere on the internet where people could accidentally stumble over it.

Shoma was quiet and serious, most of the time.

Quiet and serious and awkward. Yes, awkward as well, definitely. And that was because he could not remember a time when he did not know the consequences of his actions.

It was the one presupposition about young people, young men especially, wasn’t it? The one thing that went without saying. They sometimes had to be forgiven for the stupidest things, because they didn’t know what they were doing, did not think about the consequences, about what could go wrong.

That had never been the case for Shoma.

People would, now and then, talk about someone being an ‘old soul’, referring to a person who was, in their eyes, ‘beyond their years’.

An old soul who, very unfortunately in Shoma’s case, looked like he was trapped in the body of an eternal child. No one would even think to call that cute, curly-haired kid an ‘old soul’, now would they?

So Shoma came across as just plain weird.

For the most part, he was okay with that.

Shoma was quiet by nature – introspective and not all that social. Not anti-social, either, but being with people quickly tired him out, especially when they didn’t seem to get him, which was most of the time.

The only one who came close to understanding him was probably his brother, and not because they were similar. They were very different, even. His brother’s level of understanding mainly stemmed from the fact that he’d spent more time with Shoma than friends or acquaintances, and lived in the same house, which made it more difficult to keep a distance.

Well, Shoma was glad he couldn’t keep a distance from his brother, if he was honest. If there had been no one who even remotely understood him, he might have begun to lose his sense of self.

And Shoma liked who he was, he wasn’t uncomfortable in his body, as much as it looked like it sometimes. He was only uncomfortable with the way people treated him. Like a strange, sometimes cute, sometimes creepy child. It was ridiculous, Shoma decided one day, when he looked in the mirror. His face had nothing childish about it anymore. There was no reason to judge him by his height only.

He acknowledged, of course, that he was socially awkward, which perpetuated the way people acted around him.

Figure skating wasn’t a social sport – or rather, it was intermittently social, when the tension was released after a competition, or during shows. Or sometimes it could be social in training with other skaters, though that was optional. One could keep to oneself, and Shoma often did. Therefore, he wasn’t well-versed in the way people interacted. His chosen profession simply didn’t lend itself to that. If one was as outgoing as Yuzuru Hanyū, then maybe, yes.

But even Yuzu would not be navigating the skating world with quite so much ease if he didn’t have Javier.

 _Javier_.

Javier scared him a little.

He was the opposite of Shoma in so many ways.

Friendly and open, a joker, almost always smiling, at ease with everybody.

Kind.

Well, Shoma supposed, or at least very much hoped, that he could be kind himself, but it was rarely called upon.

Shoma kept himself apart, disappeared into his own head, most of the time didn’t even notice the little personal dramas that the skating world was so full of and that were unfolding all around him, all the time.

Or if he did notice, not only did he not know what to do about it, but someone had already done something. And who would have wanted Shoma’s help, anyway?

Javier, on the other hand, noticed everything, was always helping people out, asking worried questions about someone that ‘looked off’, tried to resolve fights and temper down animosities. Javier liked harmony, and thrived on it.

How did Shoma know this?

Shoma knew, because watching Javier was his guilty pleasure.

It had started out as fascination. How could another human being work so very differently from him? Shoma had always thought Yuzu to be incredibly different, back when he’d started out in Japan.

But Javier was a whole other level of different. Yuzu and Shoma actually had quite a few things in common. As dissimilar as some aspects of their personalities were, they shared not only a culture, but a work ethic, and a furious determination. They also were people who kept most things close to the chest; Yuzuru just had a different, less obvious way of going about it. And they both could focus to the exclusion of almost everything else.

Javier, on the other hand, needed people. He needed the closeness, the noise of social activity, and he needed emotional interactions.

His way of focusing was not to cancel everything out, but to take everything in.

At first, Shoma had thought that a terrible idea, but over the years, he’d seen the advantages more than the disadvantages of it. It could throw Javier off his game when he realised, not only by hearing the scores, but by feeling the room, that his competitors were doing well; but it could also spur him on. It could make him nervous that the audience was fired up, though actually that very rarely was the case. Mostly, he seemed to absorb the energy and work with it. That was something admirable, something very few skaters had to that extent – Javier was open, for better or for worse, and therefore, he was incredibly connected.

When Javier Fernández skated, you were always on the ice with him.

And today, he was skating his last senior competition.

Nobody had told Shoma, certainly not Javier, with whom he’d never exchanged more than a few words. He’d not read it in the press, either.

He saw it in every line of Javier’s body, in the way he looked around, in the way he bent down to touch the ice, like Yuzu always did, but with a small, wistful smile.

Shoma was suddenly very glad he was here.

It was a freak accident, him being at this competition, one of the very last of the season. Neither his coach nor him quite knew why they had signed him up for it, until they realised there’d been a misunderstanding about the dates early on. Usually, Shoma wanted to be done after Worlds.

He didn’t really know either why he hadn’t withdrawn, but now that he was here, he felt it a privilege to watch Javier Fernández say goodbye.

Shoma only hoped the man hadn’t come because he thought he could win easily, with most top skaters ending the season at Worlds. Now that Shoma was here, he was skating to win. Nothing else made any sense, as much as he could see the beauty in Javier leaving with the gold.

He shouldn’t have worried.

Javier messed up his quad salchow in the short, and placed behind Shoma, but his free skate was – well, not out of this world, that was very much Yuzuru’s style, and more or less what Shoma aspired to, as well – no, it was very much _in this world,_ it was so real it hurt, but in the best way. It was perfect, and not like a painting could be perfect in its beauty, not like something you looked at abstractly. At the end of those four and a half minutes, the whole rink had skated it, lived it, breathed it.

Fittingly, it was the last skate of the day. Nothing could have come after that. Nothing good, anyway.

Shoma had stayed to watch, which he rarely did, but after he had realised the day before that this was Javier’s goodbye, no one could have kept him away.

Dimly, he realised he was applauding like a madman.

A second later, he noticed how strangely Mr. Orser was looking at him, and felt his face turn red.

Yes, of course Javi’s coach would stare, it was very unlike Shoma to react that way – or maybe the man was just confused, because Yuzu wasn’t here, and now the other Japanese guy was cheering for his skater.

Shoma decided that he didn’t care.

The audience refused to let Javi off the ice, especially when the announcer repeated, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, that was our last skater for the day, Javier Fernández’, probably in an attempt to move things along. But the many Spanish flags around the packed arena were only waved with more fervour at the words, and most people stayed on their feet.

They probably knew, as well.

Javier waved, and bowed, and laughed when someone threw a Pooh bear onto the ice, looking into the audience as if to see whether Yuzu was there after all.

Shoma felt a sharp twinge of jealousy that surprised him.

Sure, he had envied the ease with which Yuzuru and Javier interacted, and also the fact that Yuzu could just watch and spend time with this utterly fascinating person every day, but he’d never resented it. Suddenly, he felt like… well, like…

_Oh, no._

_Just no._

_This was probably a bad idea._

Shoma had never feared something like this would happen.

Javier was so far removed from him – both in the concrete and the abstract sense of the word – that the possibility of developing any kind of feelings for such a far-away and alien being just hadn’t occurred to Shoma.

But, through Yuzu’s stories, and his own observations, Javier had somehow become, if not relatable, then at least understandable.

And apparently, for Shoma, there was some truth to the old saying about opposites attracting.

 _Fuck_.

He had stopped clapping now, and was staring. Coming across as creepy again, most likely, but Javier smiled an out-of-breath-smile anyway, as coach and skater passed him on the way to the Kiss & Cry.

“Hi Shoma.”

Shoma bowed deeply.

What else could he do?

He heard the audience reacting, and realised there had to be a camera on them. With a slightly flushed face, he straightened, and looked into Javier’s uncomfortable one.

 _Right_ , Javier had never really learned how to deal with the bows, Shoma should have remembered. Though he probably wouldn’t have acted any differently.

It made him smile, that look.

“Go on,” he said in English, because Javier stood frozen in place, and his coach seemed impatient.

Javier went, though he threw a look back over his shoulder.

There was something crackling in the air between them, at least in Shoma’s always vivid imagination.

He turned to look back over the now empty ice, the lone cameraman staying with him, making him uneasy, as usual.

The scores were announced almost immediately, and the camera guy cursed as Shoma turned his face away from the lens in that instant, to give Javier a thumbs up on his win.

Just in case he was looking at him, though there was no reason why he should be.

He was.

Shoma followed the thumbs up with a little wave that made him feel ridiculous, especially because they were only standing a few meters apart, but Javier waved back cheerfully, saying something to his coach that made them both laugh.

It might have been at Shoma’s expense, but, quite uncharacteristically, he didn’t mind.

That laugh was something to cherish.

Especially because he wouldn’t hear nor see it anymore next season.

 _Wow_. Wasn’t his timing great?

Of course Javier’s very last competition would be the moment Shoma realised he was attracted to the man.

Well, nothing would have come of it anyway.

 _But think of the time you could have spent pining_ , the sarcastic voice in his head offered.

He shook his head at himself, his expression probably as sombre as he felt, then remembered there might still be a camera on him. But the guy next to him was filming the audience, thank god.

They’d have a few minutes before the medal ceremony. Shoma turned away before his eyes could stray back to the Kiss & Cry, and went backstage. Mihoko held out a water bottle as he passed her, and tilted her head in a silent question, so he stopped.

 _What was that all about?_ her posture said eloquently.

Shoma felt sorry for her when he considered she’d probably only watched the performance on one of the monitors.

“I had to see that,” he said, and Mihoko added a slight frown to her tilted head. Shoma was fond of that woman.

“How did you know?” she asked, meaning, ‘ _How did you know it would be this good?’_

“I didn’t.”

_I just hoped, somewhere deep down, even though I’m stuck with silver yet again._

Because this was Mihoko, he didn’t have to actually voice any of that. They could just leave the conversation there, though she did give him another curious look, before she relented.

She was used to him. Used to his quietness, his non-sequiturs and to him standing on his own when he so chose.

Shoma drank from the proffered water bottle, got roped into a broken English conversation with the bronze medallist, and discretely looked around for the winner.

Javier must have been giving an interview by the rink, because he only showed up briefly, and went out through the curtain again almost immediately. Shoma turned to follow, ignoring Mihoko’s ‘You have time’. Looking back over his shoulder, he gave her a small smile and a shrug before the curtain fell closed behind him.

His heart started beating wildly, when, just as he’d hoped, he found Javier standing by the boards alone, hands behind his back and looking out at the pristine, freshly resurfaced ice.

Quietly, Shoma took his place beside him, and after a moment, the other looked over with a small, melancholy smile.

It was the smile that decided him.

“Hug?”

Too late, Shoma realised he should have added a smile of his own. But he was nervous, and already bracing himself for an English answer he’d have to try and parse.

Javier’s short, confused “What?” was easy enough to understand, however. Shoma took a deep breath.

“Last skate, yes?”

Shoma wasn’t prepared for the full force of that melancholy look, accompanied by a small nod. He hastened to add,

“So, hug? Like Olympics?”

This time, he got a small, disbelieving laugh.

“I thought you hated that.”

The answer was spoken slowly, giving Shoma enough time to process all of the words.

“Not hate, no. Not understand. Loud. English too fast.”

And now he even remembered to smile a little. Which was very good, because it made Javier smile back.

A smile just for him.

“Oh. Sorry.” Javier said in a low voice.

Shoma shrugged, to indicate it was all right. That hadn’t been the first time he’d been completely lost in translation. It was always better if he could make do without words, hence the shrug just now. He usually wasn’t a physically expressive person, but still, he was more comfortable with gestures than with broken scraps of an unfamiliar language.

Javier kept looking at him, and Shoma had never felt more vulnerable than in the next second, when he decided to take a step forward and open his arms in silent invitation.

He probably should have fought to keep the smile from waning, but he couldn’t help it. This was a serious matter. Shoma couldn’t remember ever wanting a hug with someone, much less initiating it.

For a second, there was no reaction except for a stare, and Shoma thought desperately,

 _This is the most embarrassing moment of my life_.

But then, a broad smile broke out on Javier’s face, a smile full of happiness, and he stepped into Shoma’s open arms.

Shoma fully expected to feel uncomfortable, but no.

It felt safe.

Warm and safe.

 _Fuck_.

Javier hummed right by his ear, and Shoma felt a shiver run through him. He hoped it wasn’t noticeable.

“Happy you win,” he whispered, and regretted it instantly, because Javier pulled back, taking some of that warmth with him, and looked at him with a frown. At least he still had his hands on Shoma’s shoulders.

“Now, don’t lie.”

Shoma shook his head eagerly, sending curls flying.

“Not lie. Beautiful.”

He meant the program, but realised the remark could be misconstrued, when Javier’s eyes went wide.

In that moment, music blared from the speakers, and they sprang apart. The cameraman was only now getting back to his spot, Shoma noticed with relief. Javier gave him a strange little smile, then looked away.

The bronze medallist, a newcomer whose name still eluded him, was looking at them curiously. Shoma retreated behind his blank face. They announced Javier, then him, and he skated out after the thunderous ovation for the winner had died down, getting his own rather generous round of applause.

Javier hugged him briefly from the podium, making it work somehow despite his elevated position and Shoma’s short stature. They waved, and smiled, and got their medals, and the usual unnecessary flower arrangement, and listened to the Spanish anthem. For once, Javier did not make a joking comment at the end about it being so long. He just stood there, eyes fixed on the flag, until the camera flashlights went off again, and he visibly shook himself out of it.

When all the pictures were taken, and they were skating to the side of the rink, Javier said something to him, but Shoma had no chance of deciphering English with all the background noise. He made a gesture that hopefully indicated just that, and Javier replied with one of those ‘not important’ hand waves.

And that was it. They parted ways as soon as they left the ice; Javier immediately surrounded by his coach and what had to be his family.

The gala was the same night, at this event, which was kind of brutal, Shoma thought, hoping his tired muscles would cope.

It was hectic, and not all that well organised, but Shoma didn’t care much. It passed in a blur, punctuated by the occasional smile from Javier. That surprised him every time it happened, even after the moment they’d shared today, but then he realised that he actually was one of the very few skaters present who had been competing against Javier for a while – he seemed to be the familiar face that anchored him.

Shoma was honoured.

As they were coming off the ice after the finale, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned around, and Javier’s other hand settled on his other shoulder, giving a brief squeeze.

“Good luck.”

It seemed to be an all-encompassing wish for the future, and Shoma inclined his head.

“Thank you.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shoma is unsure of what to do (if anything), and Yuzu has a lot of opinions, because of course he does. Will things actually move forward? Well, see for yourselves...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, a chapter a day.
> 
> Comments would be a nice reward ;-)

They actually crossed paths at a series of shows in Japan during the summer. But Yuzu was there, as well as a few of the Canadians with whom Javier seemed to get along so well, so Shoma mostly admired him from afar.

He still had trouble understanding why he was attracted to the man.

It just had never occurred to him, growing up, that his eyes would be drawn to features that were quite different from what he was familiar with. That had been narrow-minded, of course, Shoma saw it clearly now, and did not mind the challenge of accepting this attraction.

But the physical side was the least of it, really.

What did his heart want with this man?

Was he simply fixating on a personality he did not possess himself – outgoing, comfortable with other people, sociable?

No, that couldn’t be it. Shoma did sometimes wish for these character traits, because they could have made his life easier, but most of the time, he did not regret the way he was.

Why, then?

He’d always found the idea that love couldn’t be understood preposterous, but he was beginning to come round to it.

Not that this was love.

Admiration, perhaps. A persistent crush. He could possibly admit to that.

This was another thing he found preposterous – people talking about being in love just like that, like the flick of a switch. You needed time to fall in love, time and closeness, and he’d only had one of those things. You needed to know someone to be in love.

Strangely, it felt like he knew Javier much better than most people, but that was just his mind playing tricks on him.

Shoma looked up, startled, when he heard the squeaking noise of blades moving over rubber mats. He hadn’t noticed any of the other skaters finishing their practice.

“You are watching Javi.”

Yuzuru moved to sit down beside him in the stands, sounding a bit gleeful about his observation, and though Shoma’s heart skipped a beat, he was not surprised. A remark in this vein had been bound to come his way eventually, and it had only taken so long because, when they were someplace together, Yuzu usually hung around with Javier, and didn’t always pay attention to Shoma.

So Shoma didn’t bother denying anything. His only hope was to steer the conversation a bit.

“Yes. He is… intriguing.”

Shoma was pleased with that word. It was the kind of word he would normally only remember after a conversation had concluded, and then he would be angry with himself, because it fit much better than the one he’d actually used. Not this time round, though.

Annoyingly, Yuzu giggled. But a second later, he looked at him rather seriously.

“Funny you should say that. He basically said the same thing about you.”

_He did?_

Shoma knew he was staring at Yuzuru blankly. There was no other way to stop the _He was talking about me?_ screaming in his mind from showing on his face.

For once, probably for the first time ever, Yuzu took pity on him instead of teasing, and kept talking.

“I don’t know what you did there at the Interona Cup, but he hasn’t shut up about you since. I watched the livestream from home, and I saw you clapping like crazy, but there must have been something else…”

Yuzu trailed off and looked kind of expectant, but Shoma had no interest in telling him, if, surprisingly enough, Javier hadn’t done so already. Instead, he asked, carefully, quietly,

“What do you mean, he hasn’t shut up about me?”

It made Yuzu grin triumphantly, that question, but Shoma just sat there stoically, and again, Yuzu answered.

“I mean, he asked about you more than once or twice. It’s not that he talks about you all the time. Or maybe he does, I don’t know. We… we don’t speak all that often, now that… now that he’s done.”

Yuzu too had gone all quiet with his voice now, and Shoma thought he understood why, though he couldn’t exactly relate. As independent as Yuzu pretended to be most of the time, he’d had, aside from (and very different from) the people he employed, someone to share the burden with, and had maybe come to rely on that more than he’d initially thought. Perhaps… the one Shoma was closest to when it came to skating was Mihoko, perhaps it was at least a little bit like trying to do without her, and that didn’t even bear thinking about.

“I’m sorry,” he therefore offered, his words inadequate to express the regret he felt for Yuzu, but apparently the meaning came across anyway. Yuzu looked at him sharply.

From what Shoma saw, or thought he saw, Yuzu was astonished. Perhaps astonished that Shoma could be empathetic like this, and that reaction was one of the few instances where he truly deplored his usual habit of keeping away.

It would have been nice to have someone who understood him.

Yuzu was smiling a little sadly now.

“Thanks. It’s alright, though. I noticed it more because he came by for a week to develop the new show program with David Wilson. It’s my fault anyway; I’m not good at keeping in contact when I’m training…”

He trailed off, seemingly realising he was talking more than usual. Shoma was very surprised already. Was this openness what he’d get in return for a bit of overt empathy?

At that moment, Javier waved to them, yelled, “Hey, Yuzu, watch this,” took off, and after picking up speed, went into Yuzu’s trademark hydroblade. He didn’t quite pull it off, it looked a bit wobbly, but he didn’t fall either, and everyone cheered, Yuzu grinning broadly and giving him a thumbs up.

Javier looked pleased with himself.

“He’s a good friend, isn’t he.”

Shoma didn’t really phrase it as a question. He’d always wondered how much of their interactions were for show, but had long since come to the conclusion that most of it was genuine. Yuzu confirmed it with his reply.

“The best.”

Then, after a beat of silence, he added,

“But you’re not watching him because you’d like to be best friends, are you?”

There was no hint of jealousy in Yuzu’s voice, which surprised Shoma. It also sounded like Yuzu was pretty sure about himself, so, again, he didn’t bother denying outright, even if it made his heart beat faster to practically admit to something like that. To Yuzu, no less. Maybe a counter-question would help him get away from this feeling.

“And that doesn’t bother you?”

Yuzu’s look turned indulgent, which Shoma used to hate, because he was not a fucking child, but this time it didn’t seem quite so bad, somehow. Still, he gritted his teeth to remain silent in the face of that look.

“He’s my brother. Always. I once wished for a little while that it wasn’t that way, because we look perfect together, don’t we?”

Those words could easily have sounded arrogant, but they didn’t. It was true, after all.

“But that kind of feeling just didn’t come, and now I’m glad for it. Who knows how that would have ended.”

Shoma couldn’t hold back any longer.

“Why are you telling me this?”

They had remained friendly enough, over the years, but Yuzu wasn’t one for confidences, and Shoma definitely wasn’t the one confidences usually were imparted to.

“Because, I think, unlike me, you could love him.”

_Fuck. What…?_

He felt his face turn red-hot, heard himself splutter and cough.

“Em, no? No! What are you… what are you talking about?”

He managed to make Yuzu look unsure at least. Nevertheless, his teammate replied, with only a bit of bravado,

“Oh, don’t bother, Shoma-kun.”

And Shoma deflated. By not denying things before, he’d admitted to a lot already, anyway, but hearing that kind of thing said out loud… Well, Yuzu hadn’t implied that Shoma did love Javier, only that he could, and that was true enough, he supposed.

So he composed his burning face and nodded in confirmation.

Yuzu looked pleased, and Shoma wondered at that, as well. Did Yuzu have a high enough opinion of him to think him good enough for his best friend? Apparently; because he only said,

“You realise you have the worst timing for this.”

“It hasn’t escaped me.”

There came the giggle again, though right now it was a little less annoying, for some reason. Shoma managed a wry smile.

“Hey, can I laugh with you?”

Shoma twisted his neck too sharply at those words, the cracking sound making Javier wince. Shoma could do nothing but stare at him in shock, and felt his barely cooled-off face redden again.

“I… I have to go,” he stammered, still in Japanese, not even realising that Javier might not understand. The last thing he saw before he turned and disappeared as fast as one could while wearing skates on solid ground, was the Spaniard’s confused expression.

 

~---~

 

_You fucking idiot._

Shoma was lying on his hotel bed, immensely glad that they always had the luxury of single rooms at Fantasy on Ice.

It gave him all the time in the world to berate himself for his terrible reaction. There had been no reason for it, either. Why couldn’t he just have kept his usual poker face and excused himself politely?

His phone buzzed.

 _< Don’t worry, I invented an excuse for you.>_ Yuzu’s text said, and that laid at least one demon to rest. Even with the strange seriousness and kindness of their talk today, he hadn’t been sure that Yuzu wouldn’t rat him out.

_< He seemed so worried about you, though, kept asking if you were alright. I really think there might be something there.>_

The last sentence was followed by a winking emoji, then a kiss emoji. Shoma rolled his eyes, even as the meaning of the words sunk in and made him strangely jittery.

_There might be something there._

It affected him much more than he would have thought, hearing those words.

Because… well, because, usually, Shoma was the man for impossible crushes. That had to be it, that was what made this different –  just the distant possibility of something actually developing.

Shoma was used to falling for older men. And women, once or twice. It was inconvenient, that. Unfeasible, even, his mind usually insisted. He was therefore also used to the process of looking, sighing, cursing his stupid heart, trying to move on.

Javier Fernández really broke the pattern. Well, he was a few years older, too, but those six or seven years, Shoma’s mind could definitely live with, and maybe…

He was being stupid again, he knew it. The fact that Javier seemed interested could just be a testament to his general niceness, or, even if it was that kind of interest, he might not want a relationship. Would Shoma go for a one night stand? He had no clue, actually.

He’d had sex a grand total of once in his life, with a girl, and it had been mostly embarrassing, as first times were apparently wont to be, both of them unsure what to do. That at least wouldn’t be the case here – Shoma had seen Javier leave more or less discreetly with an older skater, a male skater, during the summer shows last year. Several times. So at least one of them was experienced.

Shoma hadn’t been jealous of the other guy then, but if something like that were to happen now, he would be, he realised.

_As if you have any right to be._

But Yuzu – Yuzu had talked about love. Though, Shoma suspected that Yuzu was a bit of a romantic at heart, so maybe he was exaggerating possibilities here.

_Oh, sod this._

He was turning in circles.

Shoma grabbed his phone and typed a reply.

_< Find out for me, would you?>_

There were two weekends of shows left, after all.

 

~---~

 

Shoma nearly spat out his coffee a few days later at breakfast when he absent-mindedly glanced at a new text from Yuzu.

_< Got him to admit you’re hot.>_

It had been sent the night before, so Shoma didn’t bother replying immediately.

He had to fend off questions from Stéphane anyway, who noticed his barley prevented beverage spill and wanted to know what was going on.

Stéphane never got tired of trying to talk to him, no matter how limited Shoma’s English communication abilities – and his communication abilities in general, to be honest.

Lack of communication was another thing that was dooming this probably-not-going-to-happen relationship from the start. He still hadn’t talked to Javier at all during the last week, after he had run off when the opportunity to talk had presented itself. Well, Javier’s arrival in the middle of his conversation with Yuzu had been very bad timing.

“Oh, hey, Javi!” Stéphane suddenly called out, and Javier, who had clearly wanted to walk past them, stopped with a guilty look, his eyes avoiding contact with Shoma’s.

“Good morning, you two.”

He nodded to Stéphane and took a seat beside him, across from Shoma, still without having looked at him.

_What have you done, Yuzuru Hanyū_ _, I’m going to hunt you down if you’re responsible for this._

There was one advantage to it, however. Javier looked uncomfortable already, so Shoma, always afraid of messing things up by opening his mouth, was hardly going to make them worse this time around if he tried to talk to him, he reasoned.

Stéphane gave him the perfect opening, too.

“Hey, are you skating ‘Prometo’ tonight? I wouldn’t mind seeing that again.”

Javier turned half towards Stéphane and frowned.

“No, don’t think so.”

_Alright, here we go, Shoma. Trying to hold a conversation in English. Good luck._

_Well, let’s start off easy._

“Why not?”

Shoma had to smile a little as Javier’s head snapped towards him, as if it was unheard-of to for him to speak at breakfast. Well, he was usually quiet at breakfast. And at most other times of the day, yes, yes, he knew.

Javier tilted his head.

“Do you think I should?”

Well, Shoma wasn’t going to give him instructions on what to do or not to do. Amazing enough that he’d asked. But what he could say was…

“I like it. It is…you…”

He tried to remember scraps from frustrating conversations with non-Japanese-speaking choreographers.

“Music interpretation is very good. It, uh, flow? Flows, it flows. And is… complete? Well-rounded.”

That wasn’t all he had to say about it, but close enough, he supposed. He was proud of himself for having remembered ‘well-rounded’.

Javier was looking at him with rather wide eyes.

“Thank you,” he murmured, eyes darting away again, apparently embarrassed by the praise. A strange look on him, but very cute, Shoma decided.

Beside them, Stéphane chuckled.

“So you did understand what I was saying when we talked about the choreo last year? You always had that blank look.”

Shoma wasn’t sure he’d gotten all of that, but the gist of it was clear. He shook his head.

“Not understand much. Look up words later.”

He had a whole list now somewhere, with English ‘choreographer words’. He tried to explain this, and managed to do so after one or two false starts.

Javier and Stéphane both smiled at the idea.

“Do we all sound the same?” Stéphane asked, mock-affronted, and Javier and Shoma replied in unison that, yes, they did indeed.

Their consensus on the subject made them grin at each other in agreement, and Shoma loved Javier’s grin. It made him feel all funny inside, but not in a bad way.

 

~---~

 

Javier skated ‘Prometo’ that night.

Shoma stole out to watch in the dark beside the boards. He would never admit it, but he loved the program for another reason entirely than the also true ones he’d given.

That look there towards the end, between hope and desperation.

That look got to him in ways he refrained from examining too closely, for once preferring to just feel.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A nickname unappreciated, contagious impatience, having a moment (however brief), and a gift.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last of the relatively short chapters. Don't know if they'll get better, but they'll definitely get longer...
> 
> Comments would still be very much aprreciated!
> 
> Oh, and if here or in later chapters you notice something off about the few Japanese words I put in here and there, please tell me. I'm more sure about the Spanish, but there might be mistakes in there as well.

Last weekend.

Last show.

Yuzu was impatient, and Shoma shook his head at him, careful to keep his voice down, even if there were no other Japanese speakers currently present in the changing room.

“I talked to him a few times, that’s already progress! A big improvement from before.”

“Yes, but you’re not going to see each other for months now.”

Shoma sighed.

“And do you think that would change just like that, if something were to happen now?”

Yuzu frowned at him.

“Ehm, yes?”

As if it were self-evident.

Shoma couldn’t hold back.

“Oh, where do you live, Yuzu-kun, in a fucking romance novel?”

Frustration made him speak louder than he’d intended. From across the room, Jeffrey Buttle called something that had his name in it, but was too fast to understand.

“What did he say?” he hissed to Yuzu, before his teammate had time to reply.

Yuzu smiled apologetically.

“He didn’t understand most of it, I’m sure. He, hm, he said something like ‘Hey, I know that one, that’s a bad word, what has Shoma cursing?’”

There was an ever so slight hesitation before Yuzu said his name, and Shoma sighed again, trying to mask the fact he was rattled by someone listening in, and if it was only by understanding a word or two.

“Be honest, did he say ‘Shoma’ or ‘our little Shoma’?”

He knew the way the others referred to him when he wasn’t around, or thought he didn’t understand. Yuzu’s slightly embarrassed, but at the same time delighted grin was all the answer he needed.

Shoma went over to Jeff, looked up at him, conscient of the irony of what he was about to say.

“Not fucking _little_.”

It was a mixture of Japanese and English, but no one present had trouble understanding the words. Everyone laughed, especially because Jeff looked flabbergasted and maybe even a little scared by the way Shoma was staring at him darkly. After a few seconds, the older skater managed a smile, and a sheepish “Sorry”, that made the laughs increase in volume.

Javier chose that moment to come in. He looked around curiously.

“Everyone laughing without me again? What’s going on?”

Johnny snickered.

“Oh, nothing much. Jeff ran afoul of Shoma.”

Shoma hadn’t heard the word ‘afoul’ before, but just the sound of it, and the tone in which it was spoken, were enough to understand.

“Oh no, you don’t want to do that.”

Javier said it slowly, and very seriously, as if he knew something the rest of them did not. He managed to keep a straight face, too, only the corner of his mouth twitching slightly, and Shoma enjoyed the looks of shock around the room for a second, before he couldn’t hold it in any longer, and dissolved into giggles.

The only ones laughing with him at first were Javier and Yuzu, then the others joined in tentatively, as if unsure on whom the joke was, or how to deal with this side of Shoma. Javier held out a hand for a high five, and Shoma was glad he even understood, because high fives were another thing he did not usually partake in. A fist bump at most, if people insisted. But now, he gave the appropriate response, their palms connecting with a smack, and found that he didn’t mind this. Not at all.

With a last smile just for Javier, he turned back towards his duffel bag to dig around for a comb and hair product – he’d been about to do something about the mess on his head before the interruption.

Yuzu was still standing in the same spot, and Shoma nodded to him.

“See. Progress.”

“Yes, I see.”

There was a small smile playing on Yuzu’s lips, and he didn’t sound so impatient anymore.

Paradoxically, as the evening progressed, Shoma felt as if impatience now had him in his grip.

Sure, a few days ago Javier would never have thought to joke with Shoma like he’d done earlier.

Sure, they talked now.

But it was painfully difficult, their conversations hit and miss, because of the language barrier. Almost exclusively because of the language barrier, Shoma was sure of it, given how often they caught the other’s meaning perfectly despite of it – much more often than he was used to with other people. Maybe his heart’s choice wasn’t quite as stupid as he’d thought.

He never felt the frustration of his limited means of expression more acutely than when he asked Javier, freshly off the ice after another emotional ‘Prometo’,

“Why you say you not want skate it?”

There was a flinch, and a sharp look towards him, and then Javier gestured towards the side, away from the other skaters, where the empty ‘camera corridor’ was. Empty, because the TV recording for the weekend had been done yesterday.

Shoma followed, very conscient of eyes on them, that followed until they’d rounded the corner.

Javier slumped against the wall, still breathing hard – from the skate, but also from the emotion of it, Shoma thought.

“It’s… it’s like this. That song… I love that song.”

He didn’t seem to know where to begin, for once not speaking slowly just for Shoma’s benefit.

“But, you see, well, I hope one can see it… That song is about losing, or rather failure, mostly. Trying to hold on desperately. Happy days not coming. An eternal promise of tomorrow, not today. It is a bit hopeful, but just a bit. And it’s more… hopelessly hopeful, hope against all reason, if that makes sense?”

Javier struggled with the words, and Shoma struggled with understanding them – oh, he got it, the meaning twisted in his gut, but he wanted to understand everything, every nuance, all of these hard-won words. And, beyond that, he wanted to have words to reply.

The only thing he managed to get out was,

“About… someone?”

It had to be about someone, that skate. Or maybe not, sometimes the feeling created itself, even if it hadn’t been lived by the skater, Shoma knew that well. Sometimes, living it in your mind could be enough.

“I thought it was. I think it was, for a while. But I lost that feeling. It wasn’t a good feeling, but it’s horrible too, to have lost it.”

Javier’s voice was quiet, his tone melancholy. His eyes were kind, as he watched Shoma, waiting for him to parse the statement, translate the words in his head and put them together.

Shoma felt his lips form a quiet ‘oh’ when he got there. Without thought, he reached out a hand and laid it over the approximate location of Javier’s heart, nearly pulling it back immediately when he realised his boldness, when he felt the steady, then quickening beat against his hand. He managed to stop himself, however.

The hand stayed.

He forced himself to look up into Javier’s wide, wide eyes as he spoke.

“Sorry.”

“For what?”

The question came out as a hoarse whisper.

“For say to you, you skate it.”

Fascinated yet again, Shoma watched as the eyes lost some of their desperate wideness, as the skin crinkled around them, heralding a smile.

“No, no, that’s alright, I don’t mind skating it for you, provided you never become the subject of it.”

Despite the hint of a smile, the words were very earnest.

Shoma’s head swam with the effort to decode – ‘alright’ and ‘skating for you’, that much was clear, and very nice, even; ‘provided’ he discarded, no chance of understanding that, which left ‘ you never’ and ‘subject of it’; ‘it’ had to be the song, the program, and ‘subject’…Oh. The one it was about. Javier didn’t want him to be the one the hopeless song was about.

Next thing he knew, he’d taken a step forward and was leaning his head on Javier’s chest, instead of just his hand. Arms came around him after a second, and there they stood, a bit wobbly on their skates, clinging on to each other.

It was a very different feeling from the hug they’d shared a few months ago.

Warm and safe again, but with the promise, no, the certainty of more.

Dimly, as if through sound-numbing fog, Shoma heard Yuzu’s voice.

“Shoma, curious skaters incoming!”

He pulled back as if burned, a terrible ending to the embrace, momentary hurt and confusion in Javier’s eyes as Shoma backed away clumsily, to lean against the other wall of the corridor, facing him. Javier’s look changed to understanding a second later, when a few of the girls rounded the corner, followed by Yuzu, all of the Japanese skaters already berating Yuzuru for the warning he’d just yelled.

The girls stopped, first disappointed, then embarrassed, when they saw Javier and Shoma leaning against opposite sides of the corridor, by all appearances pulled out of a conversation.

Shoma glared at them and Javier pulled off a curious ‘care to tell me what’s going on’-look, that made them flee immediately. Yuzuru stayed, and almost simultaneously, they mouthed ‘Thank you’ at him in two different languages.

“I hope you were at least kissing,” Yuzu said, still in Japanese, but Javier must have made sense of the words well enough, because, after a second, he turned as red as Shoma’s face was already feeling, and shook his head no, grumbling,

“Not that it’s any of your business.”

“Idiots,” Yuzu replied, but rather fondly, and they went to follow the group for the finale, the ice cooling their hot faces.

 

~---~

 

A kiss wasn’t meant to be. It being the last night, Javier was sought after, now that he wouldn’t see most of the still competing skaters in the fall, when the new season started. Yuzu, to his credit, made one or two half-hearted efforts to extricate him from the fray, but Shoma understood well why they were half-hearted. Of course Yuzu would want to be with his friend – he was already acting more selfless than Shoma had thought him capable of being.

Shoma wasn’t in the mood tonight for staying on the edges of the group. Something unfinished was hanging in the air after their embrace had been cut short, and he kept close to Javier, uncharacteristically finding himself right in the middle of everything – boisterous laughter ringing out around him, drinks being emptied quickly, people slapping him on the back.

He didn’t enjoy it, but it was alright. Not as terrible as he thought it might be.

When Scott Moir got up from his seat beside Javier, Shoma was quick enough to plop himself down on it before anyone else could.

He laid a tentative arm on Javier’s shoulder.

“Javier…”

It was strange, he was unsure how to suffix the name, so he left it like that.

“Shoma!” Javier grinned at him broadly, maybe a tiny bit drunk, then frowned. His look grew over-serious, and, yes, definitely a bit drunk.

“Don’t call me that.”

Oh no, what now, he knew he should have – but that didn’t make sense, why would he –

“Javi, just Javi.”

Right. Everybody called him Javi. Shoma hadn’t really felt like he was allowed, which was probably him being stupid, as per usual.

“Javi,” he started again, solemnly, and Javi smiled with bright eyes. Shoma would never call him anything else, if that was the look he got for it.

“Phone numbers?”

He held out his phone towards Javi, who nodded a few times more than strictly necessary, but it made Shoma smile. He hoped dearly that no one was watching them right now. Probably a vain hope, but he didn’t care enough either to look away and find out.

“Oh, yes, definitely.”

Javi started typing it once Shoma had unlocked the screen.

“Sure you know it?” Shoma found himself teasing, and Javi swatted his shoulder, all of the usual physical boundaries apparently abandoned now.

“Hey, I’m not that drunk!”

Shoma took the phone back, pressed call, waited until Javi had Shoma’s number on his own phone screen to be absolutely sure it had been typed in correctly. Okay, not that drunk, he conceded, if Javi had even remembered to put in the country code.

There wasn’t much more talking, because someone turned up the music next, and the noise level swelled.

They communicated with smiles, and twists of the head, but not for very long.

This being a hotel bar, they wanted to close at some point, and most of the group decided to go to a club.

Javi was looking at him hopefully, but Shoma grimaced, and explained,

“Early flight. Very early.”

“Oh.”

Now, Javi looked frustrated, gloomy even. He sighed and drew Shoma into a brief hug.

It was over in a second, but even so, some of the others were staring at them curiously.

“Good luck,” Javi said, just like last time, and Shoma replied the same way as he’d done before, but then added,

 _“_ _Oshiawase ni_ _._ ”

 

~---~

 

The next morning, his hand closed on a little red plastic bag on his doorknob when he left the room shortly after five. It contained a box of his favourite chocolates. A post-it proclaimed ‘¡Que aproveche! ;-)’

Where Javi had found them, and how he’d even found out that Shoma liked them, he didn’t know, though he suspected Yuzu had had a hand in this.

It was such a stupid romantic gesture.

Shoma felt it tug at his heart all the same, or precisely because of it, he wasn’t quite sure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Oshiawase ni." - I wish you happiness/luck"
> 
> "¡Que aproveche!" - Enjoy/Bon appétit (I always find it stunning that English doesn't have a real equivalent...)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fast-forward. Worlds 2020. A reunion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'm being nice to my characters here. Enjoy it while it lasts :)
> 
> Comments? Pretty please?

They didn’t see each other until Worlds.

Eight months later.

Eight whole months.

Javi was down with the flu when Shoma competed in Italy, and Shoma’s Grand Prix assignments didn’t bring him to France or anywhere else near Spain this year, and then Javi was taking on some coaching duties that required a regular presence at his home rink, and honestly it was just annoying how the universe conspired against them.

There weren’t that many words exchanged between them in actual back-and-forth-conversation, other than trying and failing to find a date where they might actually be in the same place, but barely a day went by without a message from Javi.

Javi was taking photographs of a hundred little things. Sometimes of the street he was walking down, a tree, a flower, sometimes a selfie at the rink, a photo of his skates, haphazardly thrown into a corner, the view from his balcony, a Spanish dish he’d cooked, a nice-looking girl with long brown hair (captioned: ‘Laura, my sister’), a group of giggly young skating students, a fancy cocktail in a bar, the slightly blurry stage at a concert, a beach sunset, his cat, his cat again, a guitar (‘bought it, now I have to learn to play it’), preparations for his ice show at Christmas, a tiny amount of snowfall that was barely visible but apparently a big deal in Madrid, a football game, and, once, a heart drawn onto a fogged-up window.

And finally, plane tickets to Montreal.

Shoma replied with an emoji or a thank you or some inane comment at first, then began sending a few pictures himself, now and then, just like Javi did. He realised he had an eye for spotting odd details, loose ends, a forgotten glove, a wrapping paper impaled on the branch of a tree, a key someone had lost on the ice. So there were a lot of those, but after the photo of Laura, he sent back one of Itsuki (whom he had to tell what it was for, but who’d been surprisingly non-annoying about it). Then, when the season began to pick up, pictures from gala practices with skaters that were becoming so familiar that he sometimes dared to call them ‘friends’, a gold medal (‘trying best to break silver curse’), Mihoko with a ‘this is the moment to concentrate, not to take a picture’-face, his foot wrapped in bandages (‘I’m okay, nothing serious’), a selfie with a half-smile.

And finally, feeling daring, the hotel marquee, then also his room number in Montreal.

He had never felt less nervous about the competition. There was another thing to be nervous about, this time round.

It had been a strange – and probably incomplete – way of getting to know each other, with pictures more than with words, though after a while Javi sometimes began to send a line or two in between, often without much context, just like the pictures. Those texts could send Shoma googling, because Javi might be angry about a politician whose name Shoma had never heard, or recommending a song, or asking some absurd trivia question. The tediousness of formulating English sentences made this part of the conversation a bit one-sided, but then again, it was in keeping with their personalities anyway, that Javi would share more. Sometimes, Shoma felt the one-sidedness of it keenly, and then he would overcorrect, send a few lines of song lyrics for example, that weren’t all that far away from how he felt that day, and actually revealed a lot all at once, if you knew how to look at it. Javi’s replies to those texts were never out of place, but always short, not giving away how much he’d understood.

From pictures and sparse words alike, Shoma had learned many a thing he’d ignored before: a thousand different things that made Javi laugh, for instance, and some of those that made him angry. And also other very important things, this one prominent among them: that Javi liked quiet moments, even days to himself now and then. That had been a surprise, and something of a relief; before Shoma felt annoyed with himself for having been blinded into not seeing it before.

He had honed in on the obvious differences that existed between them, and had overlooked the similarities, had not looked enough behind the more prominent personality traits, even if he should have been knowing full well that ice shows and competitions were somewhat extreme situations, not to be compared with everyday life. Now, he was wondering how he’d ever thought them to be opposites.

Javi never shut Shoma out completely during the quiet days, it was just that the words ceased and his pictures took on another tone, so to speak. Even the brightest, sunniest photograph could somehow convey a feeling of melancholy, or on other days just serenity. Shoma had the tendency to actually write a few lines on those days, piece them together with the help of a dictionary.

At one point, however, he asked himself whether he wasn’t disturbing the pauses it seemed Javi was taking from hectic life, and so, he decided not to write anything. Only to find “Talk to me, please?” in his inbox, without even a smiley that would have made the request sound a bit lighter.

Shoma had felt the instant need to reply, but he had been in the middle of last minute changes to his choreo that day, and had had no time to take a break and go for the dictionary on his phone. So he ended up sending a long, winding, chaotic, probably half-unintelligible message right then and there about what he was doing.

Scrolling through their by now impressively long message feed (Shoma was running out of memory on his phone, but he refused to delete even one picture; he’d rather get rid of some of his games) he found the message from that day – it was indeed a strange jumble of words, but even so it had been followed by an almost immediate “Thank you.”

Shoma smiled, and scrolled back down.

No reply yet.

The picture of his brass room number was staring at him mockingly, making him wonder, not for the first time in the half-hour since he’d sent it, whether this had been a completely and utterly stupid idea.

To keep himself from checking his phone compulsively every few seconds, Shoma pulled out his console from one of his chaotic suitcases and started up a game. It didn’t even bother him all that much anymore that they were in English.

He had decided that he had to improve his English if he wanted to hold less frustrating conversations with Javi. But Shoma wasn’t about obvious choices, and so, trying to find a more interesting alternative, he began to learn Spanish instead. It was only marginally less frustrating than English, but Shoma found he liked the sounds of it much more. The language was a pleasing mixture of soft, flowing tones and hissing sharpness.

Because – even after a few intense months of treating his Spanish online courses rather like skating and obsessing about getting better – he wasn’t confident in his abilities at all, he also did a terrible thing and changed the setting of all of his favourite video games to English. Meanwhile, Itsuki was obsessed with some horrible American TV series, and Shoma forced himself to watch that, as well. It had the added benefit of having something in common to talk about with his brother.

In the end, his comprehension of both languages improved astronomically, but he wasn’t so sure about talking in either. Talking was something one had to practice, and joining a conversation group felt too much like wasting precious time, even if it might have helped.

Shoma looked up, out of the window, towards the building opposite, and a sliver of blue sky over it.

He found he couldn’t for the life of him concentrate on his game right now, his eyes having strayed not only to the window, but also to his phone, time and time again. It would be a shame to ruin his previous levels by dying every few seconds.

He reached for his laptop instead and opened Youtube. There’d been a new Spanish interview with Javi in his notifications yesterday, about the coaching work he was doing, and Shoma leaned back into the pillows to watch it, laptop on his knees.

Not for the first time, he wondered if Javi was speaking absolute textbook-Spanish, or was easier to comprehend because Shoma wanted to understand him pretty desperately, or both.

In any case, the words were easy to follow, and his smiles – well, his smiles. Shoma wanted to be on the receiving end of those smiles again. He looked a bit tired here, though… That was the problem with keeping up with someone by text, something like that just didn’t always come across, and…

There was a sudden noise that – had that been a knock?

Shoma paused the video just as the knock on his door was repeated. Usually, nobody bothered him in his room, but well. Someone had apparently decided to. Yuzu, perhaps. All other members of team Japan were at another hotel this year, for some inexplicable reason. The Americans were booked in here, he’d learned, but most of them hadn’t arrived yet, and none of them would knock on his door, he didn’t think.

“Coming,” he called out in English, just in case it wasn’t Yuzu, and quickly closed the video. He wouldn’t risk anyone seeing him pining after his probably-not-even-boyfriend.

A second later, he was looking at said not-even-boyfriend.

Even after his last text, that had at least implied a ‘I’m here now, come and get me’, the sight was so unexpected that Shoma forgot he should speak. He’d never have thought Javi would actually be here within an hour of him sending that stupid photo.

Shoma felt strangely like a magnet was pulling him forward. Automatically, he resisted, stood frozen to the spot.

“Shoma. Hi. I… sorry, I shouldn’t have just come. I should have texted. Or called. It’s – I’m staying with Scott, you know, Scott Moir, he offered his guest room, and I was just over at the rink to say hi to Yuzu anyway and then I went for a walk and got your text and, um, thought I might as well come here in person, and then I just walked in here, which is saying something about the security at this place, to be honest, so now I’m here… And I’ll just shut up now.”

Javi looked horrified by the words that had just fallen out of his mouth in an ever-quicker tumble.

Somewhere below his still enduring shock, Shoma noted with satisfaction that he’d had no trouble following Javi’s rather endearing ramblings. Was he, Shoma, really responsible for making Javier Fernández this nervous?

Before he’d found words to reply in any language, Javi added, with an unhappy look,

“Or maybe I’ll just go and we start over tomorrow?”

Still the words did not come, so Shoma, with uncharacteristic directness, just reached for one of Javi’s hands (that he’d been nervously opening and closing, half held out in front of him) and pulled him into the room. There was no resistance to speak of.

The door, which Shoma had been holding open by standing in it, fell closed on its own.

He let go of Javi’s hand and they just stood there, awkwardly, darting furtive glances toward the other without really looking, until a small smile found its way to Javi’s lips.

“Hug?” he asked, and Shoma stepped closer immediately, giving in to the force pulling him towards Javi, now that he had been given permission to do so.

Being enclosed by Javi’s arms felt strangely like a habit already – warm and safe and familiar, but also completely new, exiting, heartbeat-accelerating. Like last time, there was the promise of more being on offer, if he wanted it. Only this time, they were alone, and unlikely to be interrupted.

They really were doing this.

Finally, the words came, easily all of a sudden.

“Hola, Javi. Cómo estás?”

The arms around him tightened for a second, then Javi moved them upwards, one hand brushing Shoma’s cheek. The touch induced a shiver, even more so when it firmed, and Shoma’s chin was tilted upwards, their eyes meeting; snapping into place it felt like.

A little laugh colored Javi’s voice as he spoke.

“Ahora? Muy muy bien.”

And then, quietly, quickly,

“Pero con un beso estaría aún mejor.”

So Shoma lifted his head a little more, and kissed him.

His lips, chapped from exposure to cold air and worry as usual, encountered their counterparts with a soft brush, then with a bit more pressure. He let them linger, the touch soothing and white-hot at the same time.

After a few heartbeats, Javi’s lips moved, slowly, very slowly, and Shoma let himself fall into the sensation, his movements instinctive, one hand coming up to the back of Javi’s neck, the other clutching his shoulder, his grip loosening a little as the kiss progressed, grew intense and then soft again.

His thumb had begun to stroke over Javi’s neck, automatically, unthinkingly, provoking a sigh that whispered against Shoma’s half-opened lips.

With a little smile, Shoma pulled back, murmured,

“Finalmente.”

Javi’s eyes laughed at him.

“I guess you understand Spanish now, huh?”

“A bit,” Shoma replied, then didn’t know how to continue, English and Spanish intertwining in his head into a strange mixture.

“Oh, we make a right pair,” Javi full-on laughed this time, noticing Shoma’s word troubles. “You can try speaking Japanese with me, I should be understanding it much better now, after the classes I’ve taken.”

 _Glasses? Ah, no, right._ Classes _, he’d said._

_Well, let’s try that out then._

“You took Japanese classes for me?”

 _‘For me’_ – Shoma hadn’t meant to ask quite so directly. But this was what happened when he did not think about every word before speaking it.

Javier was smiling with his eyes again, apparently having no trouble understanding the Japanese question, and replying in his clear Spanish.

“Yes, I did. I mean, I did try already a few years ago…For Himawari.”

He added the last with a slight hesitation, as if unsure whether it was alright to speak of his years with Miki Ando. Shoma simply nodded – this wasn’t a surprising statement, after all, that he’d wanted to learn the language so he could speak with her daughter – and Javi continued, looking needlessly grateful that Shoma was just taking this in stride.

“It went nowhere, then, I just didn’t have the time to really focus on learning another language. I often had enough trouble with English. But you… you learned Spanish for me?”

There was a grin on his face again. Shoma had really missed that grin. He responded with a smirk of his own, but his words started out modest, despite of it.

“I am trying. I don’t know many words… actively, I guess, but I understand a lot now. I think I understand you.”

The last sentence took on another meaning as it left his mouth, ringing out with it in the quiet room. Javi nodded solemnly.

“I think so, too, yes.”

 

~---~

 

They had taken advantage of their newfound ease of communication, until Javi had thrown himself out when he realised how late it was, and how early Shoma’s training the next morning would be.

He’d turned around in the doorway, a longing look on his face, and Shoma had had no compunction about demanding another kiss, which had been granted immediately.

Shoma was distracted during his practice in the morning, but it went mostly well. Sometimes it was good to think about something else.

Concentration was important, too, though, especially for the quads, he told himself, annoyed with himself as he got up after an entirely avoidable fall.

Yuzu was looking at him, and so it didn’t surprise Shoma that he came up to him right after their practice time had come to a close.

“You are somewhere else today in your head. So…”

The sentence was left hanging, and Shoma played dumb. If he wanted to know something, with his unseemly curiosity, he should come right out and say it.

“So?” Shoma repeated.

He only managed to earn himself an eyeroll from Yuzu.

“So did he finally kiss you?”

“No.”

The disappointed look on Yuzu’s face was pretty comical. With a smothered grin, and a last look around the locker room, to make sure nobody was listening in, Shoma added,

“Not until I kissed him, that is.”

He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it certainly wasn’t for Yuzu to hug him. Not as nice as a hug from Javi, but acceptable, Shoma decided. He pushed away after a second or two – some of the other skaters were throwing them looks.

“What did you do that for?”

Yuzu laughed happily.

“Oh, I’m just glad I don’t have to deal with Javi’s pining anymore. Maybe now he can think about something else again.”

Shoma didn’t know what got into him, but he grinned back and raised his eyebrows meaningfully.

“Or maybe not.”

“Shoma!”

Yuzu sounded a little bit scandalised, but really only a little. Enough, however, to definitely attract the attention of the group.

 _Oh no_. A quick deflection was in order.

“Relax everyone, I just tell him hydroblade look stupid.”

He really was getting too comfortable around Yuzu, Shoma thought, as a quite a bit more outraged cry came from his teammate. But he got away with it again. A second later, Yuzu was giving him a wry smile and shaking his head.

“Whatever, little one.”

“Hey!”

Shoma couldn’t help but protest the use of that nickname, and they kept bickering for a while, earning themselves headshakes and fond grins from their fellow skaters, who were left in the dark as to the content of the once again entirely Japanese conversation, but understood the tone of it well enough.

Nathan was looking at them rather enviously – by now, Jason had arrived, but he wasn’t in the same practice group, and though, like Shoma, Nathan wasn’t usually one to participate too much if others were horsing around, he apparently would have liked the option to do so.

“Don’t be envious. No one really want another Yuzu,” Shoma told him when the ‘lost puppy’-look stayed on Nathan’s face a little too long. Apparently, he wasn’t done with throwing shade yet. Something about yesterday’s happenings made him feel like he was on top of the world. A heady, dangerous feeling, and not one Shoma was usually partial to.

But still, Yuzu didn’t seem to mind all that much. He was laughing brightly at Nathan’s shocked face.

“It’s all right, Nathan, I can tease him about… something else,” he finished, rather lamely, noticing even before Shoma’s murderous look that this was not a subject best talked about just yet.

“Come, on, we’re late anyway.”

Off they went, their separate ways, Shoma to choreo practice, and lunch, and his habitual strategy discussion with Mihoko, and a few early interviews (he had gotten so much better at those, but oh, how he hated them), and and and.

As always, the days seemed long in the morning, and way too short already in the early afternoon. It was close to 6 pm when Mihoko found him and told him to call it quits for the day.

“You look exhausted, I can get you a taxi,” she said, always forthcoming when she knew he’d had to deal with interviews. They’d missed the bus back to the hotel.

Shoma shook his head no.

“I want to walk a bit. Can you take my bag back to the hotel?”

She acquiesced with one of her more worried looks.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“A bit distracted, though?”

Of course she’d noticed as well.

“Yes. But that can’t be helped.”

Shoma gave her an apologetic smile, and let her stand there in the corridor, her face now more confused than worried, which was perhaps slightly better, he guessed.

He managed to get lost once even with Javi having sent the location of the ice cream place he was at with that new app everyone was using. It would have told him where to go, had Shoma actually looked at it.

But he liked traveling, liked foreign places, and he really liked the look of Montreal; had no problem putting up with the cold weather of early spring. When he remembered that he had directions to follow, he pulled out his phone, and promptly did an about-face.

Javi was sitting at a table close to the door when Shoma arrived, giving him a cautious smile and asking, a bit stiltedly, whether he was ready to completely mess up his diet plan.

Shoma nodded, earnestly, because ice cream was a serious matter, and leaned down to place a kiss on Javi’s cheek before he sat down. An innocent gesture, very quick and chaste, but certainly more than a reserved Japanese guy would be doing among friends, and probably also more than he would have been doing, had they been in Japan.

Javi looked shocked, as if he’d just shouted ‘Hello, I’m gay and I like this man’ from the rooftops, so Shoma asked, with a sinking heart,

“All right?”

An incredulous little smile appeared on Javi’s lips, contrasting with his serious eyes.

“Very all right. But what if…?”

It was clear what he wasn’t saying.

_What if someone sees, what if something gets out, what if the media has a field day with it, what if it messes up your life?_

“Fuck them.”

Shoma said it with feeling, an all-purpose heartfelt insult to all the idiots in this world. He startled a laugh out of Javi.

“My sentiments exactly. So… we’re not doing the hiding part, then?”

Shoma shrugged, trying to sound like it was no big deal. Perhaps it was crazy, to feel so comfortable with this after so little time, but in his mind Shoma couldn’t quite decide whether they’d been together since yesterday, or for the last eight months, and when the latter notion prevailed, it made him bolder than usual.

“I say, if something gets out, then so be it. I see no reason to hide one of the better things about myself from the world.”

Javi took a second to parse the statement. They had stayed with their Spanish/Japanese conversation method, and it was working well so far. It might sometimes take a moment, or a question, to be sure they’d understood, but Shoma was more comfortable now that he was on more equal footing when it came to formulating complicated things.

This time, Javi nodded without further inquiry, something fond in his eyes.

“I am on board with that. Provided you’re sure.”

There was a bit of worry in there still, but Shoma didn’t get the chance to crush it, because the waitress came up and asked, with a professional smile,

“So, I see your friend is here now – what would you like to order?”

Shoma took notice of the almost empty Coke in front of Javi, and as soon as they’d hastily chosen something delicious with lots of forbidden calories, he asked how long Javi had been waiting for him.

“A while.”

He wouldn’t say anything more than that, so Shoma pulled out his phone, wincing when he looked at the time and calculated back to Javi’s initial message. His detour had taken him longer than he’d thought.

“Sorry. I got a little lost on the way here.”

Javi smiled at him.

“Don’t be. I don’t mind a bit of anticipation. As long as it’s not eight fucking months again.”

Shoma hid his embarrassingly loud, snorting laugh behind his hands, and Javi looked a little proud at himself for having managed to crack him up.

They ate their sundaes, Javi pulling faces as he tasted this and that, stealing a bit of pistachio flavoured ice cream form Shoma, trying to make him laugh again with his antics, and succeeding quite often.

“I’ll walk you back,” Javi said afterwards, seemingly as reluctant as Shoma was to part ways.

Shoma looked at his profile as they walked, then away, then back again.

Should he…?

Finally, he cursed his own cowardice, and deliberately brushed their hands together, fingers intertwining easily, despite the slight height difference.

Javi squeezed his hand, and gifted him with one of his most beautiful smiles.

And so they walked on. Together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Hola, Javi. Cómo estás?” - "Hello, Javi. How are you?"
> 
> “Ahora? Muy muy bien.” - "Now? Really really well."
> 
> “Pero con un beso estaría aún mejor.” - "But with a kiss I'd feel even better."
> 
> "Finalmente." - "Finally."


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mihoko is amazing, Javi is not too bad either, and an important phone call is made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Onwards... 
> 
> Feel free to tell me if you think I'm widely off the mark with the way I portray certain things (this applies to all further chapters, as well, of course).

“I saw you with Javier Fernández yesterday.”

The words were spoken in a tone that made it clear Mihoko hadn’t just seen them walking down the street.

Shoma sighed.

_Already_.

He refused to blush, but wasn’t quite sure he succeeded. She must have spotted them saying goodbye at the street corner, before he’d reached the hotel. There had been no kiss, not even on the cheek, but Javier had briefly cupped his face, the light touch of his gloved hand lingering long after it was gone.

“Yes.”

It wasn’t really a sensible answer, but as long as she didn’t ask a question, Shoma saw no reason to… She did.

“Is it serious?”

There was no judgment in her look, none at all, and Shoma was once again reminded why he was fond of this woman.

“It’s very new.”

Mihoko tilted her head.

“That doesn’t mean it’s not serious.”

As usual, she was spot on. And then, she added, head still inquisitively tilted, showing once again how well she knew him,

“You don’t want to hide it.”

Shoma looked at her as fiercely as he could, and, with way more bravado than he felt, repeated yesterday’s words.

“I see no reason to hide one of the better things about myself.”

Of course, there were a hundred stupid reasons the world could throw at him. But this was non-negotiable to him.

He could give up things for skating when necessary, as long as he understood why. He felt a sense of responsibility towards his fans, a strong sense of responsibility, to be the best version of himself on the ice. But he would not distort himself for them, he’d sworn to it a long time ago. Because that, to his mind, would precisely be a betrayal of his responsibility.

And some of this must have shown on his face, because Mihoko nodded.

“Maybe we’ll be fine,” she said slowly.

“But if it goes all crazy at some point, you should know that, as I understand it, this is quite a bit more important than a gold medal.”

Shoma inclined his head to show his profound thanks.

“She’s amazing,” Javi would say, when he told him about this exchange that night, and Shoma would agree whole-heartedly.

Right now, her laughter made him look up again.

“Not that I don’t want you to fight for gold, you hear me?”

Relieved beyond measure at her light tone, Shoma grinned.

“I hear you.”

Yes, he heard her.

He concentrated on his training this time, with furious focus, not allowing any distractions. But after all the hard work, he couldn’t really stomach the thought of a lonely evening in his hotel room. Sleep was always an option, though he had the distinct feeling he was too keyed up to go to sleep early.

Barely through the door, he texted Javi.

Javi was terrible at reading Japanese, so weird English it was.

He learned that Javi was going for drinks with Scott, and a few friends of the retired ice dancer turned coach, but that he maybe could come by a bit later? Shoma replied that he didn’t want to cut Javi’s evening short, Javi replied that he didn’t want to keep him from sleeping if he came by too late, Shoma explained that he didn’t feel like sleeping, Javi asked if everything was all right, Shoma reassured him that it was…

It was tedious.

Finally, Javi wrote,

_< Be selfish :) What would you like?>_

_< To see you.>_

The words looked stark in black and white, too revealing, but Shoma hit the little ‘send’-arrow anyway.

The reply was immediate.

_< I’ll be there shortly after nine.>_

Shoma closed his eyes, anticipation spreading through him. He remembered what Javi had said about anticipation, and tried to savour it for the next two hours, tried to firmly believe that Javi would keep his word, tried not to hold back on his feelings just because he would be crushed if Javi didn’t show up.

The knock on his door came at 20:55.

“Spanish people are usually late, isn’t that the cliché?”

He tried for nonchalance again as he opened the door. It backfired spectacularly, as Javi said, with wide, faux-serious eyes,

“I can leave again.”

“No!”

All pretence at nonchalance was gone as Shoma, once again, pulled him into the room.

The hugs were definitely becoming habit by now. Such a nice way to greet each other.

_I need you_ , Shoma thought, as strong arms closed around him, and it was neither as surprising nor as scary as it could have been.

“I missed you today,” Javi murmured, as if echoing Shoma’s thoughts, and Shoma held on tight. It prompted a slightly worried,

“Did something happen?”

“Not really.”

It hadn’t felt like something grave and important in the moment, but maybe it had been, the way Mihoko had calmly shown her support. Shoma told him about it, standing there in a loose embrace, and Javi nodded, and proclaimed Mihoko ‘amazing’ and then was very quiet for a while.

It didn’t become uncomfortable, exactly, but Shoma was a worrier by nature, and so, at some point, he asked, needing a bit of reassurance himself this time,

“Everything okay?”

Javi looked at him steadily.

“Yeah. You know, just thinking about stuff.”

He didn’t elaborate, and Shoma didn’t ask. Instead he asked the next best thing that came to mind to get Javi out of his contemplative mood, and so they ended up playing a two-person-videogame together for a while.

Shoma didn’t even really try to win, but succeeded time and time again anyway.

Finally, Javi jumped up in frustration, and took a few steps away from the bed; agitated.

“You are a little unbeatable demon!”

He didn’t manage to sound annoyed at all. Shoma followed him, a grin spreading over his face, coming to a halt right in front of Javi.

“You know, usually people think I’m cute.”

He looked up with big, innocent eyes.

“Oh you’re cute all right, that makes it worse.”

Javi still sounded way too fond. Impulsively, he reached out and tousled Shoma’s hair.

“I find that really annoying,” Shoma couldn’t help but say. Even coming from Javi, the gesture was annoying.

He got an immediate apologetic look.

“Right. Sorry. But can I…”

The hand was at Shoma’s hairline again, but this was different, something of a caress one might have called it, until the fingers started carding through his hair firmly. Shoma noticed belatedly that his eyes had closed and that he was leaning into the touch rather like a cat might.

“So, you like that, then,” Javi murmured, close to his ear.

Shoma opened his eyes, lazily, slowly.

“Yes.”

And just like that, easily, he added,

“And I like you.”

Javier’s smile spread slowly, but was no less blinding for that.

“And here I’d promised myself a while ago I’d not get into another long-distance relationship that would have me flying to Japan all the time…”

Shoma’s heart leapt, but he tried to play it cool.

“Relationship, huh?”

Javi looked absolutely crestfallen, taking his flippant words for refusal, somehow, and making him feel instantly guilty for not treating this with the appropriate seriousness.

“Unless you don’t – “ Javi started, but stopped when Shoma reached out slowly to place a hand over his heart, like he’d done in the far-away moment where, in retrospect, this had all become real. Javi’s heart was beating quite fast. Shoma smiled just a little, despite himself.

This was indeed something serious. But maybe it was possible to treat a serious matter lightly.

“You’re forgetting about the part where I have been pining for you, for eight months at the very least.”

Javi’s delighted smile made a comeback, his expression changing from night to day. But then, he added, seriously,

“And I also shouldn’t forget the part about not hiding.”

Yes, well. That should have been a bit of a giveaway as to how serious Shoma was about this.

Again, Javi didn’t sound like this was bothering him for his sake, more for Shoma’s, but Shoma began anyway,

“You know, if you think it’s better to hide for a while, until you’re sure…”

“Oh, I am sure.”

_Estoy muy cierto_ , Javi had said, and Shoma liked the sound of it.

They kissed, long and deep and drawn-out, and by the end of it, somehow, Javi had come to sit on the bed, Shoma practically in his lap.

For a little while, they stayed like that even after the kiss had come to a close, their breaths sounding loudly in the quiet room.

Then, Shoma flopped down onto the bed, looking upwards at Javi, who smiled at him fondly.

Sometimes, life was very good.

“I should call my mum, though,” his newfound boyfriend said suddenly.

“Your mum?”

The topic change made Shoma’s head spin.

“Yeah, I mean, if something should get out I don’t want them to know from TV?”

Shoma, who usually thought about everything three times before doing anything, had somehow managed to avoid contemplating talking to his own parents. It was a taboo he would be breaking, it felt like.

“My brother knows,” he said quietly, needing a bit of time to calm his whirling mind, and Javi went with the topic change, easily. He just nodded and asked to be told about Itsuki.

“He’s a bit crazy,” Shoma started, getting a murmured “As siblings are wont to be,” in reply.

He attempted to describe how Itsuki was so very different from him, but had always accepted Shoma’s personality as a given. At one point, he tried,

“He’s way more outgoing, let’s put it like that.”

“Well, that’s not that difficult.” Javi raised his eyebrows, but with a smile.

“No, no, think Yuzu on a crazy day, but multiplied times five.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

A few slightly insane stories about his brother later, Javi asked, a bit tentatively,

“So how did he react, when…”

Shoma shrugged with a small grin.

“I had to tell him that I wanted to send you a photo of him, and even though I didn’t exactly explain anything, he just looked at me and said ‘really, the Spanish guy’? And that was it.”

Javi laughed, his head thrown back.

“Oh, I want to meet him!”

Then, after he’d calmed down,

“Will they be here for the competition?”

“No, no. My parents are not that fond of flying.”

Shoma debated with himself for a moment, his instinct to keep things close to his chest warring with the desire to talk to someone. Well, not someone, but Javi specifically.

The room was so very silent when he sat up. Javi, who had at one point laid down beside him, was looking at him intently, and followed the movement, drawing his legs up to sit cross-legged on the bed. Now Shoma was the one who followed suit, mirroring the position.

“I don’t know how to tell them.”

The words came out quietly, but he found that, now that he’d started, it wasn’t all that difficult to continue.

“This is not something that’s talked about. ‘Coming out’.”

He had to smile at the look on Javi’s face when he heard the Japanese word, which was basically the English one, adapted a bit for the Japanese language. That in itself might be saying something. The word didn’t really fit, even the concept of sharing something so private, potentially announcing it to the whole world, a bit strange for Japanese society. But they had yet to find a better term.

“I just have no clue how they might react.”

There was this sick feeling twisting in his stomach, this suspicion that his father would look at him in stony silence, and that his mother would start blaming herself, because she thought she’d done something wrong. He didn’t know where it came from, the idea of it didn’t even really fit that well with the way his mom usually acted, but it was there all the same. And what would they do, what would…

He took a deep breath, and did something he would never have even contemplated a year ago – he told someone, told Javi all about his fears.

Javi let him talk without interrupting, his varying facial expressions the only comment he made.

Finally, when Shoma had fallen silent, he didn’t give words of encouragement – they would have sounded hollow, anyway, seeing as he did not know Shoma’s parents at all. He only said,

“Do you think you can ignore this, now that you’ve started thinking about it?”

Shoma looked at him, immediately horrified at the thought of this weight staying on him during the competition.

“No.”

“What time is it, in Nagoya?” Javi asked next.

His reply came automatically.

“Around noon. Sunday, already.”

“Do you think you could call them?”

“What?”

It felt like his heart had suddenly decided to jump out of his chest, it was racing so fast.

Javi shrugged.

“Only one way to get it out of your mind.”

He looked more anxious than he sounded, but seemed pretty sure that this was a good idea.

“What if they hate me, afterwards?”

“Would that be worse than not knowing?”

_Yes!_ Shoma wanted to scream, but realised he wasn’t actually sure about that. Not knowing was a terrible thing.

Robotically, he reached for his phone and asked his brother if his parents were home, and if he could set up the Skype connection for them. The universe wanted this done, apparently, because the affirmative reply didn’t take long to arrive.

“Do you want me to leave?” Javi asked, quietly, and, reacting purely on impulse, Shoma told him to stay. Then he frowned, still very much overwhelmed by the situation.

“But see to it that you’re not in the frame.”

Javi nodded, giving him a brief but tight hug, and moved to sit in the chair by the window.

This was happening so so fast, Shoma though desperately, as he took the call, and his mother’s face popped up on the screen, her first question after the greeting a worried,

“Is something wrong? It’s rather late for you now, isn’t it?”

Deep breath.

“I don’t think anything is wrong.”

He was annoyed with himself for sounding defensive right from the start.

“What is it?” the deep voice of his father promptly asked, responding to Shoma’s tone more than to the words. He appeared on screen, Itsuki leaning over his shoulder to grin a greeting into the camera as well.

Another deep breath.

There was no way to set this up, really.

“This might not be ideal, but I think it’s better I tell you something right now.”

He saw Itsuki’s eyes grow impossibly wide with understanding, and somehow, that reaction was reassuring rather than panic-inducing. It was something of an achievement to shock his brother.

“I’m homosexual. Well, mostly.”

Their faces were blank, just as he’d feared.

Then, his mother asked, with an incredulous little laugh,

“Mostly?”

Shoma realised that his hands, clutching the laptop he held on his knees, were shaking. He hoped it didn’t get across over the connection.

“I have been attracted to one or two women. But it’s rare.”

Oh, this was not something he wanted to talk about with his parents. When his mother nodded slowly, and just as slowly said, “I understand,” Shoma wondered if he was hearing correctly.

“Why do you feel the need to tell us this now?” she added, her tone neutral.

Automatically, Shoma looked over the screen, towards Javi, who had his eyes closed, apparently having difficulty understanding the Japanese words through the tinny sound of the speakers. The expression of concentration on his face was so adorable that Shoma actually smiled, and kept smiling at least a little, even as he looked back to the screen.

“Because I’m in a relationship now.”

“Still that Spanish guy?” Itsuki piped up, as usual completely and utterly unafraid, before his parents could even react.

“You told Itsuki before speaking to us?”

His father’s incredulous voice came through, his face only half-visible on the screen.

When Shoma had been worried about accusations coming his way, this definitely hadn’t been one of them.

“Itsuki just guessed, when it was still nothing to speak of,” he tried to explain, the absurdity of the turn the conversation had taken making his voice light.

Now, his mom was speaking up again.

“‘The Spanish guy?’ Javier? Javier Fernández?”

Shoma swallowed the lump in his throat, and didn’t look up towards Javi.

“Yes.”

“Oh, he’s very handsome!” she exclaimed, and Shoma called out a shocked “Mama!”, referring to her in a way he hadn’t since he was a child.

He couldn’t help but look up briefly at Javi, who had apparently had no trouble following the conversation this time, and was looking slightly red in the face.

“Well, it’s true,” his mother added, earning herself a look from his father, who nevertheless added after a short pause,

“He seems like a nice young man.”

Itsuki was giggling in the background, clearly enjoying himself.

Shoma didn’t know what was happening here.

“So, that’s all you have to say about it, then?” he couldn’t stop himself from asking.

“What did you think would happen, Shoma?” his father asked gravely.

“I don’t know, otoosan,” he murmured, suddenly ashamed for having assumed terrible things.

He’d always been independent, and closed-off, and his parents had never seen that as a bad quality, had always just let him be that way. But their opinion was very important to him, and this was, this right here was… turning out to be a very good thing.

He smiled, happily.

“So, well, if you hear something, you know now,” he said, and now his parents did look shocked.

“You plan on telling people?”

His mother sounded slightly horrified.

“No. But I will not lie, okaasan.”

“Oh, alright.”

She seemed immediately mollified, though his father added,

“You know that some people might react badly.”

Shoma only nodded, once again with a twinge of guilt.

_As badly as I thought you might react._

Thinking about what Javi had said, and wanting to give him an answer just as much as his parents, he added,

“I am very sure about this.”

Once again, it was Itsuki’s impressed face that stayed with him.

The conversation moved, rather seamlessly, all things considered, on to his skating for a few minutes, until his mother remembered again how late it was in Montreal.

“You should go to bed, Shoma.”

He rolled his eyes a little (only a little, because she was right, of course) and said his goodbyes.

Just before the call disconnected, he heard her say,

“We love you.”

And that was… he had never heard his parents say those words, because they were so very rarely used in his mother tongue.

Shoma closed his laptop, and promptly hid his face in his hands.

Barely a second later, he felt Javi’s presence beside him on the bed.

“Hey, hey, that went well, didn’t it?”

He sounded so worried that Shoma looked up, wiping at the tears running down his cheeks.

“That went so well, you have no idea.”

Javi smiled cautiously, his eyes earnest.

“Happy tears, then?”

“Relief, I think.”

Without another word, Javi pulled him close, and close they stayed, for an indefinite amount of time.

“Thank you so much,” Shoma finally said, remembering whose idea the call had been.

Javi pulled back, a conflicted look on his face, as if he was only now really contemplating the less pleasing scenarios of what might have transpired.

“You’re welcome… but maybe don’t listen to me too much, I don’t know any more than you what I’m doing.”

Shoma smiled tiredly.

“Isn’t that just life, not knowing what you’re doing, but doing it anyway?”

“You might be right about that,” Javi conceded easily, and leaned over to kiss him, suspending time again.

It was way after midnight when he left.

Shoma only smiled at the profuse apologies. As if Shoma hadn’t been the one to keep himself from sleeping.

“I’ve got almost a week still to get back to a sensible schedule, don’t worry.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short program is skated, there's something that needs reacting to, and Brian is a bit blindsided, but very helpful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right, I really want to know what you think about this one.

They only met ‘outside’ for the next days, to resist the temptation of staying up too late, and… other things, Shoma thought wryly. With the way he exhausted his body daily, he was surprised he even had the energy to think about sex. But think about it he did.

Not in the rather abstract way of the last months, no. Now he had fresh memories of how Javier’s body felt up close, an what his kisses tasted like.

Javi noted his distraction with a sly grin, once or twice.

“And what would you be looking at, right now?”

They were sitting in a café, not far from the rink, Shoma taking a break in the early afternoon, and Javi clearly making the most of his little holiday. He’d leaned back comfortably in his seat, his arms crossed behind his head, the muscles bulging even through his long-sleeved shirt.

“I don’t know what I see in you, you’re not even my type,” Shoma told him bluntly, and Javi laughed.

“Oh, so that’s the way it is?”

And, after a beat,

“Nothing remotely sexy about me, then?”

Shoma ducked his head, embarrassed.

“That’s not what I said.”

 _Way too sexy is more like it_ , he thought.

“Well, if you meant that I’m not the kind of guy you’d usually go for, then right back at ya’.”

Javi was grinning at him.

Hm, this was interesting.

“What kind of man would that be, then?”

“Oh, I don’t know, but not seven years younger and a head smaller than me.”

 _Ouch_. Well, he’d asked.

Javi seemed to notice that his answer had come across as harsh, and said, contemplatively,

“But, you know, people often, when they’ve found someone, remark on how that person is different from what they’d expected, or what they’d usually be attracted to. I’d say that’s a good sign.”

He said it like it was no big deal, but Shoma held onto those words.

_Found someone._

That’s what this was.

His short program was all about longing, reaching, yearning this year, and paradoxically, the moment he stopped longing so desperately, the one he’d been longing for now right in front of him, the choreo really came together, in a way he hadn’t known was possible.

“That was beautiful,” Mihoko told him solemnly, after a run-through that had Shoma shaking his head, because the triple axel had been quite wobbly.

Shoma noted with slight shock that she seemed quite emotional, as if she hadn’t seen him do this program hundreds of times by now.

She looked at his frown, and sighed.

“Yes, I know, I saw the axel. But whatever you’re doing differently, keep it up.”

“I don’t know that I’m actually doing anything differently. I might be thinking about it differently,” Shoma said slowly, trying to understand it himself.

“Then keep doing that,” Mihoko laughed, and sent him back out onto the ice.

This was an open practice, and, as the morning progressed, more and more people came to watch. Canadians loved skating, in a different way than the Japanese did, but perhaps no less fervently. And of course, there were some Japanese fans who’d arrived early, too.

Shoma always liked this atmosphere – quieter than the competition, only a few really interested people watching, the rink slowly filling with the anticipation of days to come.

Competitions would start tomorrow – pairs, ladies and dancers first – and then he would only be able to train at the practice rink.

With no small astonishment, Shoma realised that he’d adopted a bit of Javi’s skating method – or maybe he’d always had that, subconsciously. Take everything in, and build on it.

It worked quite well, until he saw the man he’d just thought about sit quietly in one of the first rows, elbows on his knees and hands steepled under his chin, watching intently.

At that point, Shoma thought it wise to shut his surroundings out as much as possible, determined not to make a fool of himself.

For the most part, he succeeded.

He only failed with Mihoko, who said,

“I know you’re listening, but you keep looking over my shoulder today, what is so interesting there that… oh.”

She’d half turned and spotted Javi.

Shoma had never been so glad his face was red from the exertion and the cold air anyway.

“Alright,” Mihoko said, with one of her bright smiles, and moved a few meters down the boards, searching for another spot with a less distracting background.

“Better?”

Embarrassment was making him mute. Shoma only bit his lip and nodded.

He remembered that moment as he stepped onto the ice for the short program four days later – it felt like barely a minute had passed.

Between cheering on teammates, practices, half an hour here and there to at least exchange a few words with Javi every day, interviews, the habitual small nervous breakdown, a problem with his skates (always when you really needed them to just work as they should), a team Japan dinner (where most of them were already relaxed, their competitions behind them, and the men competing in the singles event were very much not relaxed), a good luck call from his family, and all the other usual rituals leading up to a competition, there had been hardly any room to breathe.

And now, as he took his place at the centre of the ice, it all came rushing into his mind.

For a second, Shoma was submerged, had to stop himself from gasping for air desperately, and then he remembered.

If you can’t shut it out, take it all in.

And so he took a few deep breaths, got into position, and he skated, all of his current life somewhere in that skate, everything coming together as if it had been made to fit.

After the last note, he needed a moment to be sure of what he’d just done. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember a flaw right now. Almost magically, it had all fallen into place.

Stunned at the realisation, he raised his hands with a little smile.

As if a flip had been switched, the actual volume of the roaring crowd hit him full force.

He waved, and bowed, and waved, and bowed, and hugged Mihoko, and wondered at his calmness while waiting for the scores. He knew they would be good.

Shoma was often astonished by his results, and even bracing for it, this time was no exception – the number looked unbelievably high. A point shy of Yuzu’s record, he thought, until he realised it was a point over it, and clapped a hand in front of his mouth to hide his expression.

Mihoko was drawing him into a brief sideways hug, laughing and wide-eyed.

Having been last to skate, Shoma left the Kiss & Cry on wobbly feet, with a persistent feeling of disbelief.

Yuzu was suddenly beside him, nodding to him, inclining his head, saying something along the lines of ‘better you than anyone else’, and then they went through the curtain to the backstage area, and cameras were shoved in his face.

Shoma had no idea what he was saying. He was, however, apparently managing to form relatively coherent sentences not only in Japanese, but also in English, getting complimented in that horribly patronising way by the American reporters on how his language skills had improved. In the midst of it, he felt a bout of compassion for Yuzu, who was even more beleaguered than him and, rather horrifyingly, had to answer questions about ‘being dethroned’, from what Shoma could make out.

At some point, Shoma saw Mr. Orser draw Yuzu out of the interviews, and thankfully it all died down quickly after that.

Usually, he didn’t mind that Mihoko left him alone almost immediately after the skate, only showing up again for the small medal ceremony, but this time Shoma felt like he needed an anchor. He entered the empty corridor leading to the changing rooms and leaned heavily against the wall.

When he looked up, Javi was there.

Shoma didn’t think, just stepped into a hug.

“Hey, champ,” Javi whispered, and Shoma couldn’t but shake his head. This was unreal. He would be waking up any minute now.

“How did you get in?” he asked, just to say something.

“Come on, that’s easy, they all know who I am. I told them I was assisting Brian.”

Shoma snorted.

“While secretly making nice with a rivalling skater. How devious.”

“‘Making nice?’ Is that what we’re calling it now?”

Javi grinned, clearly in the mood for banter, but Shoma only said, quietly, hoarsely,

“I am so glad you’re here.”

And he hugged him tight again, before letting go.

There was a curious expression in Javi’s eyes, something very bright.

“I…” he began, but then stopped himself, and started anew.

“Go take a little time to yourself. Go calm down. I’ll see you later if you insist, but maybe it would be better – “

“After the free, yes,” Shoma finished the thought.

He looked to the left and to the right, and leaned in for a quick peck on the lips, lingered a second or two longer than he’d planned to.

“Thank you for coming. Wish me luck.”

“Ganbatte kudasai,“ Javi said, looking anxious about not messing it up; then added, “¡Suerte, Shoma!” for good measure, still with a very serious look.

 _Oh, I love you_ , Shoma thought, less with words and more with a sudden, unprecedented but unmistakeable wave of feeling. He didn’t have any energy right now to protest either the thought or the emotion.

And why should he.

They parted with a smile, Shoma feeling quite a bit calmer.

 

~---~

 

It all went to hell an hour later at the small medal ceremony.

At first, it was business as usual, mostly. Yuzu and Nathan and him got their medals, and their gifts, and were asked some questions. The whole situation was a bit awkward, though, because Yuzu’s smiles wavered between genuine and forced, and Shoma was sorely tempted to hiss at him:  ‘Disappointed or happy for me, I don’t really care which side you pick right now, but please pick one.’

But that little discomfort was forgotten in a heartbeat, when an unfamiliar Japanese reporter right at the back asked Shoma for comment, and then had the audacity to say,

“So, it looks like you’re very close with the champion from a few years ago, recently.”

In that moment, Shoma was already pretty sure they’d been seen earlier in the corridor, but he reacted on autopilot. Quite like when a jump had gone wrong in a program, he focused on moving forward.

He simply nodded, a tad defiantly maybe.

“Perhaps I am.”

He kept a blank face, saw, out of the corner of his eye, how Yuzu froze beside him, clearly not expecting that kind of reply. Shoma tuned him out. The important thing now was: How far would that guy go?

The remark had sent only part of the room abuzz, non-Japanese speakers clearly noticing that they were being left in the dark about something here.

“Is there anything you wish to announce?”

Wow. That was pretty direct.

“Not at this moment, no.”

It was as if his voice was coming from far away, his mind spinning, whirling. If this question had come two days later, he might have considered giving a different answer; even though he resented the idea of talking to what he suspected was a gossip magazine reporter – the man had only given his name, not the paper he worked for. In any case, Shoma knew ‘not hiding’ meant he would have to say something eventually. But he certainly wasn’t going to let his private life take over mid-competition, if he had any say in the matter.

“Well, we can let the public draw their own conclusions,” the man said, rather nastily, and Shoma felt like he’d been punched in the gut. What did they have? There had been no one around when he’d kissed Javi earlier, or maybe there had? _Please don’t let them have a picture of the kiss. That was our moment, and not for the eyes of the world._

“Excuse me,” came Yuzu’s voice, all of a sudden, quiet and overly-polite.

“But I can’t help but wonder what this – whatever you think you are talking about here – has to do with the fact that my teammate has just broken a world record? Shouldn’t we be talking about that right now?”

The reporter seemed speechless for a second, and the Canadian moderator, who, as Shoma now realised, had looked on in mounting frustration, asked just as politely to please continue with questions in English only, so as not to exclude over two thirds of the room. Shoma, for his part, was letting the fiercely spoken ‘my teammate’ soothe his whirling mind. He had, not for the first time, underestimated Yuzu’s capacity for kindness, and keen sense of fairness.

The whole thing went on for a while, Shoma answering skating questions numbly, not really looking enthusiastic about his record, but perhaps coming across as overwhelmed, if he was lucky. His eyes were drawn time and time again to various reporters more or less discretely whispering with the one who had asked, or with other Japanese colleagues who had followed the exchange.

Then, they had the draw (second to skate in the last group), and walking out of the room, Mihoko was suddenly at his one side, and Yuzu at the other, effectively framing him, leading him away in a manner that dared any of the reporters to see what would happen, should they try to follow. Some of them looked indeed as if they were seconds away from trying.

“Thank you,” he said to Yuzu, as soon as they were not only behind the cardboard partition with the ISU logo, but through a door, definitely away from the cameras and microphones.

“Don’t thank me. You’d have to thank that asshole for setting my head straight, but we can’t have that.”

Mihoko looked only mildly shocked by Yuzu’s crass language.

“So, what…?” she began to ask Shoma, but then Mr. Orser showed up a second later, wanting to know from Yuzu ‘what in god’s name’ was going on, and someone took the very sensible decision that they should get out of there first. They ended up taking a side exit and leaving in Mr. Orser’s car.

The conversation stayed in Japanese, much to their driver’s frustration.

“Later, Brian,” Yuzu said, barely politely.

Shoma explained that someone might have seen him with Javi in the corridor, and Mihoko shook her head, and murmured,

“That wasn’t wise.”

“What was he thinking?” Yuzu asked with a frown, which had Shoma protesting,

“No, no, it was all my fault. I hugged him. And… I kissed him, too.”

Mihoko’s phone chose that moment to vibrate, leaving only Yuzu’s wide eyes on him. After a look at the display, Mihoko took the call.

She gave a lot of monosyllabic answers, but when Shoma heard,

“I am neither confirming nor denying anything without having talked to my skater,” he suspected that there had to be a federation official on the other end of the line.

When she hung up, her face was a bit grey.

“Pictures,” she said.

“ _The Friday_ has picked up a post from a gossip website where they found various fan pictures of you two from the last days, and put them all together.”

People had been taking pictures of them? Of course they had. And of course they’d posted them on the internet. Shoma wasn’t Yuzu, but he definitely wasn’t a nobody either, and the city was swarming with skating fans from all over the world. He should have expected this, he told himself, preferring to be annoyed at that rather than thinking about the way people had snatched glances of his private life.

Meanwhile, Mihoko continued.

“And then there’s one blurry one of your hug in the corridor – no kiss, I’m sure they would have told me that, so nothing that’s all that different from the way he acts around Yuzuru, for example. Only, put together, it looks ‘like something’, the guy from the JSF said. But you could deny it, they say. Even if the article is apparently titled,” – she paused for a second, pulling a face –  “ _Shoma Uno’s sexuality – an open secret?_ ”

Shoma looked at her impassively, the thought of half of Japan speculating about his sexuality more than a little abhorrent to him. But he succeeded in appearing at least outwardly calm again now that the situation was clear.

“You know I won’t deny it. Not shouting it from the rooftops is one thing, but if the JSF want me to deny…”

Even though he held the firm conviction that this was what he wanted to do, had decided long ago that this was the way to go, if there ever was someone, now that the situation was real, it cost him, to say these words. He had no idea what the JSF would do, none at all, and to a large extent, they held his career in their hands.

Mihoko just looked at him.

“They want a statement. They might have implied that denial would be preferable, but…”

She trailed off, and Shoma felt the fierce need to complete that sentence on his own terms.

“But… no. They’ll get their statement, but they can’t tell me what’s in it.”

Hell, people always needed to _know_ , didn’t they? A ‘statement’. Make it ‘official’. It was… exasperating, that’s what it was. Exasperating and scary.

But he’d seen this coming; knew far too well how the world functioned.

He’d not seen it coming on quite so fast, though.

Shoma drew a few deep breaths, and looked at Mihoko’s somewhat proud expression and Yuzu’s strange one – it almost seemed like envy was mixed in with the expected shock, but this was no time to try and understand the workings of Yuzu’s mind.

“Isn’t this great. The only thing any of us should be thinking about right now is the free skate,” Shoma added after a few seconds of silence, happy to take a bit of comfort in sarcasm.

The other two just nodded.

They were arriving at the hotel now, Mr. Orser clearly having taken somewhat of a detour, cursing when he saw reporters outside. He drove by without slowing down, and took two left turns, parking the car at the backside of the building, which was mercifully reporter-free. He shooed them all through the entrance, and then planted himself in front of them, drawing himself up to his full – not all that impressive – height.

“Someone tell me what the hell is going on.”

He spoke calmly, but was clearly nearing the end of his patience.

“Brian has done this,” Yuzu suddenly said, still in quick Japanese.

“What?” Shoma asked, and Yuzu blushed.

“Ehm, come out in less than ideal circumstances?”

Three pairs of eyes focused on the Canadian coach, who let out a “What?” in his own language.

“They need your help,” Yuzu said in English, and the look on Mr. Orser’s face was long-suffering.

“Sure. If you’d – finally – tell me what this is all about.”

And so it was that they found themselves in an empty conference room, drafting a statement.

Shoma was, not for the first time, wondering how he would ever survive without Mihoko, who had spoken up in her accented, but very passable English, explaining the situation in the broadest terms, much calmer and clearer than he could have done.

Shoma was in a relationship ‘with a retired male skater’, the Japanese media were speculating, Shoma wanted to come out.

Mr. Orser took it all in stride, throwing a loudly protesting Yuzu out as a first order of business (‘Bad enough if this is messing one skater’s preparation up’), telling Mihoko that they needed a lawyer to look over the statement once it was done, sending her out to phone the JSF about it.

Shoma asked in worried, broken, but apparently understandable English, whether the JSF lawyer wouldn’t be influencing things the way they wanted to, but Brian (‘would you stop calling me ‘Mr. Orser’, please) shook his head.

“It’s just a formality. You have the final say, should they try to change anything. This is all yours… As long as you’re sure, kid.”

For once, Shoma wasn’t annoyed by that kind of nickname. An answering look from him was apparently enough to make it clear that he was indeed sure; it had Yuzu’s coach nodding. There was something in his eyes that might have been respect, but Shoma had never been good at reading people he didn’t know well.

“Oh my god, I need call him,” Shoma suddenly realised, and Mr. Orser – Brian – nodded.

“Go ahead.”

So he phoned right there and then, spoke to a Javi who had been completely in the dark still. He hadn’t watched the small medal ceremony, and the speculation was as of yet limited to Japanese media. Shoma slowed down his hasty tumble of words to a more understandable speed of Japanese and described the situation.

Javi was more angry than worried, apologising needlessly for having come backstage, cursing colourfully in Spanish and English at the horrible timing, almost making Shoma laugh with it, then actually succeeding to draw out a chuckle when he said, ‘You don’t know how glad I am I called my mom last week’. He stressed that Shoma could contact him at any time, and ended the conversation with the reassurance that he should just go ahead with the statement, Javi would be fine with whatever he wanted to say (‘Saves me from putting out something myself, anyway’).

Only as he put the phone down did Shoma realise he’d never told him with whom he was writing said statement.

“Okay,” he said, intent on getting started, but Mr. Or – Brian tilted his head in a gesture that was so similar to Mihoko’s that Shoma wondered absurdly whether it was a coach thing.

“Your partner’s Japanese?” he asked, somewhat sceptically, and Shoma sighed. He had no idea what the reaction would be, but of course he had to tell him.

“No. He only understands it quite well.”

He wanted to go on, but the inquisitive face in front of him was already changing into slightly angry comprehension.

“What…? Don’t tell me… don’t tell me it’s Jason! You could have fucking said it was one of my – “

Shoma held up a hand, trying not to freak out about the man finally losing his calm.

“ _Retired_ skater. Not know if you like better or worse… Javier, it’s Javier.”

There was a moment of stunned silence.

“Javier? As in our Javi?” Brian then said, and Shoma liked the man for phrasing it like that. Javi was retired for nearly a year now, after all, but apparently still ‘our Javi’.

“Yes.”

The reaction wasn’t at all what Shoma had expected. Well, he hadn’t known what to expect, but it was still a surprise when Brian hid his face in his hands.

He was quiet for a few long seconds, then looked up, his expression resigned rather than angry, Shoma was relieved to note.

“Why is no one telling me stuff, these days?” Javi’s former coach asked, apparently not expecting an answer, because he added, decisively,

“Let’s get to work.”

Shoma complied, eager to get this done.

Mihoko came back a minute later, and put her phone on silent immediately. She looked at it temporarily, though, with a slightly pinched face.

“Anything important?” Shoma asked her, when Brian had left the room for a second to take a call, cursing under his breath. He had the impression Mihoko wasn’t quite telling him everything, though she didn’t hesitate to explain that the article had been picked up by some British and American gossip websites now (“Some of them are quite critical of it, but, you know, of course they’re still spreading the story”). Shoma nodded and tried very hard not to think about the fact that by this point, skating-followers not only in Japan, but around the world were definitely speculating about his sexuality.

It didn’t matter; soon there would be no need to speculate anymore.

Combining forces, they managed to get the same short text down in Japanese and English.

Brian was more patient than Shoma would have thought possible, asking him three times if he was happy with it, before they sent it out to the JSF.

The lawyer gave his ‘ok’ only minutes later, the e-mail very polite and neutral. Shoma had feared protests.

Those came directly afterwards, in the form of a call.

A guy from the JSF, not even bothering to give his name before Mihoko specifically asked for it, wanted to talk to Shoma directly. She started to refuse, but Shoma held out his hand for the phone. A look passed between them, and then she handed it over wordlessly.

Shoma flinched slightly when he felt a brief pressure on his upper arm.

Yuzu’s coach had squeezed it, in a gesture that wanted to be encouraging, and, yes, that was definitely respect in his eyes.

For a minute or two, Shoma didn’t do much talking. He listened to ‘no need for this, this is avoidable, we’re afraid of how the sponsors might react, isn’t it better to keep a private matter private, is someone talking you into this, think what this might mean for your federation…’ until he was given the opportunity to respond. He still wasn’t very good at finding words when talking to unfamiliar people, but somehow the struggle of doing so in other languages was beginning to make him more secure in his native one.

“Excuse me,” he started, remembering the way Yuzu had spoken earlier, and striving for that tone, “I do not know what this might mean for the federation, and I’m not quite sure anybody does. I fully understand this is unprecedented, but it is my decision. I do understand that there might be consequences. If… the federation sees fit to take some kind of action against me,” Mihoko drew in a sharp breath at the suggestion, and the man on the other end of the lined protested immediately, albeit a bit weakly, “all I have to say to that is, I am doing my job, rather well today even,” Mihoko smiled at the deliberate understatement, “and I hope to be judged on that, and that only. I have not done anything wrong, and I have not created this situation. You asked me to react to it, and that is what I am doing.”

A slow, deep breath, as quietly as he could, so as not to be heard over the phone. And then, a final “My decision stands.”

As nauseating as the whole situation was, it felt good to say those words, say them in a voice that did not betray him.

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

Shoma half-expected to get another speech on how he might have prevented the speculation from even happening, by keeping his relationship entirely behind closed doors, or maybe even a comment about the idea of such a relationship existing at all, but it didn’t come.

The man thanked him for his ‘frankness’, which was a bit insulting, but all things considered, he took it better than Shoma would have expected.

Within an hour, the statement would be online, the JSF official promised.

There were very polite good-byes, and belated congratulations on Shoma’s record, and then the call disconnected.

“It’s done,” Shoma said quietly, the words feeling heavy with meaning as he said them for the first time, then also when he remembered to repeat them in English.

Mihoko drew him into a hug, a gesture usually reserved solely for the moment after a skate, and Brian nodded seriously, then asked to be excused. He waved away their heartfelt words of gratitude  – “It’s nothing. But I really have to look after all my skaters now. Hm, maybe Yuzu first.”

He said the last words half to himself, and Shoma actually smiled a little at the thought of Yuzu bombarding the man with questions as soon as he would walk through the door.

Yuzu’s coach smiled back, and added, his smile turning a bit sly,

“Maybe I’ll even find time to call Javi.”

 _Uh-oh._ Shoma decided he should definitely warn his boyfriend.

And then he would try a few of the meditation exercises that Mihoko sometimes forced on him, and everything else that might calm him.

He had a competition to complete.

 

~---~

 

_Over the last hours, pictures in several media outlets have been published along with speculation about my private life. I would like to put an end to these speculations right now, even though I regret not being able to make public what I want to disclose on my own terms, but feel forced to do so during a competition, where I would prefer my focus, and everyone else’s, for that matter, to be on skating, and skating only. To end the speculation once and for all: I am bisexual, and I am in a relationship with my fellow Olympic medallist Javier Fernández. To my mind, this is an entirely private matter, and I therefore hope his and my privacy will be respected._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Ganbatte kudasai" - Do your best/'Good luck'
> 
> “¡Suerte!" - Good luck


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The lead-up to the free skate. Under anything but normal circumstances, of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapter, but it made sense to cut it off there. Don't yell at me ;-)

As always, Shoma being Shoma, he’d thought about the consequences, but in this case he couldn’t have been even remotely sure what would actually happen.

There was an unpleasant incident right the next morning where a reporter tried to corner him in the hotel corridor. Luckily, the woman looked a bit uncomfortable at asking questions while he was walking towards the elevators with a repeated ‘no comment’. She disappeared quickly, when Shoma thought to call Mihoko, and began to describe the situation.

The word ‘illicit’ tortured him on the way down to the lobby. It had figured in one of her rapid-fire questions, and Shoma tried to ban it from his mind, because nothing about what he’d been doing had been ‘illicit’, he was sure of it. It was a difficult word to shake, nonetheless.

“You’re with me,” Yuzu called out to him barely a second after the elevator doors had opened, and Shoma, who liked to make fun of Yuzu’s perpetual need for bodyguards, found himself very glad to see them this time. He had had to employ bodyguards himself, on occasion, but had convinced everyone he could do without them here in Canada.

Little had he known.

They had to get through a whole throng of reporters to get to the bus, the way being cleared for them rather forcefully. Shoma’s eyes fixated on a rainbow flag someone in the group of fans surrounding the reporters was holding up.

There weren’t often this many fans waiting for them at the hotel – none even, if they were lucky. They weren’t quite pop stars, thankfully, not even Yuzu. But a larger group than usual had shown up today, defying the cold of a March morning in Montreal.

The whole way to the bus, Shoma kept his eyes on that brightly coloured flag. He understood it was meant to be supportive, and he was surprising himself with how much he appreciated seeing it, among the pushy reporters and the questions flying around him.

_‘How long… can you confirm… is it true that… what do you say to’_ – he tried very hard to block most of it out, but it was difficult.

“You’re not worried you’ll sully your image by association?” he asked Yuzu as soon as they were seated. Shoma was very conscious of how many of the questions had been shouted at his teammate instead of him.

He got a look for his cynicism that made him recoil physically.

“I should have left you on your own out there, if that is what you think of me.”

_What am I supposed to think, when you hide your own sexuality_ , the voice in Shoma’s head commented, impulsively, but he decided right away that that wasn’t fair. He apologised as best he could, and added,

“I said it very badly, but what I meant was that some people will see it that way, yes? There has to be pressure on you…?”

Yuzu sighed.

“I think there would be, and will be, but for now, Brian is rather furiously keeping it away from me.”

Shoma smiled.

“He is a good man, your coach.”

“That we can agree on.”

Those were the last words spoken for now, both of them remembering that they would be competing against the other in the afternoon. They were at least trying to establish the usual competition-time distance for now, despite this unusual situation.

Getting into the rink, they had to run the gauntlet again, or so it felt. Shoma noticed that Yuzu was now seemingly bearing the brunt of it, question after question about his teammate and his best friend being thrown his way, and Shoma felt guilty for it. Even now, when the story was so clearly about him, they managed to make it about Yuzu.

It was such a relief to get onto the ice for the very last practice, however short their allocated ice-time was this morning in the empty rink, before they’d let the audience in. At ten, the free dance was starting, which none of them would be watching, Shoma dreading the hours until noon, until he could reasonably go for a lunch break. He had a routine of exercises and preparation he would go through, of course, but it would be a long wait. And then, after lunch, another round of waiting, until it only remained to get back on the ice the warm-up, and the skate.

Some of the others would probably be going back to the hotel right after the practice, seeing as the last group wasn’t due to skate until after five in the afternoon, but Shoma had decided against it with Mihoko – no way would he be able to calm down if he had to pass all those reporters and their questions twice more.

As much as he tried to concentrate right now, he wasn’t faring too well. He’d slept astonishingly soundly, though, that at least was a relief. Yuzu looked a bit unstable, too, but it wouldn’t be the first time he’d put on a perfect performance after a mediocre practice.

They were already sorted into their warm-up groups for this last practice, and Shoma noticed, before he told himself to focus, damnit, that, actually, nobody was at their best this morning.

He felt somewhat responsible, then told himself firmly to put the absurd thought out of his head.

When they were in the locker room afterwards, an awkward silence reigned. Not that unusual before a competition, but Shoma felt like he was at the centre of it, this time.

Until Nathan Chen said suddenly, off-handedly, or at least trying to sound that way,

“Hey, Shoma, Adam’s texting me. Tells you to stay strong.”

Shoma blinked.

“I don’t really know him.”

To his knowledge, he’d never exchanged a word with Adam Rippon.

“Well, you know, I guess it’s because he’s been out for a while now, publicly?”

Nathan still sounded casual, but Shoma wasn’t sure he was quite as comfortable as he pretended to be. Perhaps not necessarily with the topic of being gay, but with this conversation in particular.

Shoma wasn’t sure how to react himself. This was unfamiliar, strange. Well, when in doubt, politeness was always the best course of action.

“Right. I did not know this. Tell him – tell him ‘thank you’, I think?”

With a small, somewhat encouraging smile, Nathan nodded.

“Will do.”

Shoma had already turned away, intent on getting out of his costume for a few hours, when Nathan spoke up again, making Shoma look back over his shoulder.

“Oh, and Shoma? Stay strong.”

He wasn’t sure why it should matter so much, but that was… very nice to hear. Important to hear. Shoma turned around properly for a heartfelt “Thank you” and was confronted with the sight of the four other skaters from their practice group, not even pretending not to have listened in.

“Yeah, stay strong, Shoma,” Mikahil Kolyada spoke up first, and was echoed by the others immediately.

It was embarrassing, having all eyes on him, but much nicer this way than the stares he’d been getting everywhere else around the rink, even from most of the workers.

Shoma caught Yuzu’s eye. His teammate smiled at him, a smile that was just a tiny bit pained.

“You are braver than me, little one,” he abruptly said in Japanese, and it was a lot, to hear that.

“It’s different,” Shoma insisted, because it was. Yuzu was the absolute media darling, and Shoma was never resentful, always glad of moving through the skating world in his shadow. In his shadow, where it had felt like maybe he could do this. Had he been in Yuzu’s place… brr, he didn’t even want to think about that.

 

~---~

 

The scene in the locker room wasn’t the last incident of its kind.

Completely breaking the taboo of approaching another coaches’ skater during a competition, Stéphane Lambiel came up to him for a second at lunchtime, with a thumbs up and a smile, and the words,

“I knew there was a reason I always liked you. Good luck later! And say hi to Javi for me.”

Jeffrey Buttle, who had been choreographing quite a few programs that would be skated today, shot a nasty look towards a reporter being thrown out of the cafeteria rather forcefully, and winked at Shoma, who couldn’t hide it that he had been rattled by the scene.

“Chin up, little Shoma.”

Shoma glared at him menacingly for the repeat offence of using that nickname to his face, though he understood that the intention was not to mock him, and Jeff just laughed, and was off again.

A few minutes later, Shoma was putting away the tray with his only half-eaten food – Mihoko had brought him his own stuff, of course, he wouldn’t risk eating something unfamiliar right now, but he had made it a point not to shun the small cafeteria they’d closed off for the skaters.

The principle of ‘not hiding’ applied here, as well.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Scott Moir appeared beside him.

“Javi says not to worry about him. We actually smuggled him in in disguise, he’s fine. He found the whole thing exciting, I think.”

That felt like a massive weight being lifted from his shoulders – Shoma had called Javi once more yesterday, a long, meandering talk that had helped more to calm him down than the mediation exercises did. Then he’d texted his family, before shutting off his phone, and handing it to Mihoko.

There had already been quite a few unread messages by that point, that he’d forced himself not to look at. It was better that way.

But, even if they’d both agreed to it, it had weighed on Shoma, not to know what was going on with Javi.

Javi was the unknown quantity in this, after all. Shoma had made his decision years ago, and even with the storm that was raging around him now, he saw no reason to agonise over it (well, he had his quickly stomped-out flickers of doubt, but that was to be expected). But Javi had just gone along with this, and the one thing that was really worrying Shoma, the one thing he allowed himself to agonise about, was that Javi might regret it.

And now, Scott Moir was telling him he found it ‘exciting’. Shoma almost smiled. He should have known.

“Thank you,” he said, as firmly as he could, and Scott looked reluctant to go on, but then added,

“He said to me that… that even should you not land a single jump, you’re winning today. Whatever happens out there.”

Shoma understood why Scott had been reluctant – no skater wanted to hear ‘not land a single jump’ right before a competition.

“Thank you,” he repeated anyway, even with the automatic shock of those words, because the statement as a whole was something important to hear. But…

“But we see if I maybe can land jumps, hm?”

Scott smiled.

“Sure. I don’t know if this helps, but I’m telling you because I think you should be prepared for it: Those people out there are rooting for you today.”

He waved a hand towards the rink proper, where the dancing competition was still going on, cheers ringing out from a distance.

Shoma, who, despite all the words of encouragement he’d just received, had mainly wondered how many wanted to see him fail, looked at Scott with more than a little shock.

“Thank you for the warning also.”

“You’re welcome,” Scott said, and, with a last smile, he was gone quite as suddenly as he’d come.

Shoma holed up in one of the small camera-free rooms they had at their disposition near the locker rooms, music in his ears and trying to keep busy.

Finally, barely a minute before the warm up, when he’d been waiting so long that all he could think was ‘let it start, so it will be over’, Brian Orser veered towards him, even though the experienced coach had to know full well that there were already cameras on them now. He caught Shoma’s eyes, as if to check whether it was all right to approach, and Shoma nodded.

Brian should have checked about a clap on the shoulder, too, though, Shoma thought, flinching lightly. He didn’t really mind the gesture, knowing that it was intended as a show of support, but he was just not used to it.

“Sorry for bothering you. Javi might have told me specifically not to do that.”

And then,

“But I had to say good luck to you, young man.”

Shoma inclined his head, then said, out of the corner of his mouth,

“Thank you. Better go back to Yuzu before he kill you.”

Brian raised his eyebrows.

“Oh, Yuzu sent me over, you see.”

He turned around without another word and headed back.

 

~---~

 

The warm-up wasn’t a disaster, but it was… not good. The audience had reacted with absolutely deafening applause, when his name was announced, and Shoma was very grateful to Scott Moir for the warning. It was kind of scary.

And it stayed scary, when the audience, like one large… animal… maybe, reacted with a groan to every stumble, and every fall.

Shoma tried to get a moment of respite by the boards, his eyes firmly focused on Mihoko, but he couldn’t help but feel all the other eyes and cameras on him, still.

It was, and stayed, disconcerting.

The six minutes seemed like an eternity under that attention, and, then again, they were gone in the blink of an eye, before Shoma could get in at least one more clean landing, in order to feel even remotely like he would be able to do this.

His wide-eyed, helpless expression wasn’t lost on Yuzu, who murmured, as they both bent down to put on their blade guards,

“Got a taste of my world, there.”

“I don’t know how you can stand it,” Shoma couldn’t help but say honestly. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Yuzu’s slightly superior smirk.

“You can learn to work with it. Though that might have been a bit crazier than even I’m used to.”

_Thank you, Yuzu, I don’t have the time to learn to work with it right now. I’m going to be on that ice in less than ten minutes, I’m afraid._

Shoma kept the words to himself.

He realised he was shaking.

_Come on, you can do this._

_No, you can’t, you’ll fail miserably._

_Oh, fuck._

_Mental exercises, go somewhere else in your mind, anything._

Nothing worked.

And then he remembered, yet again.

If you can’t keep everything out, take everything in, and work with it.

It was just so against his natural inclination that he’d managed to forget again, even now that it had already worked out spectacularly well.

It was a daunting prospect, to try this now, under these particular circumstances, but what choice did he have?

Slowly, Shoma lifted his head, and looked at a few of the faces staring at him, the ones that were close enough to distinguish.

They didn’t look scary, actually.

There were smiles directed his way among the stares.

The energy, though, the energy running through the room, the energy he absorbed right now, was a nervous one.

That wasn’t good.

He was way too nervous already.

What else was there to take in?

There was the memory of swarming reporters, quickly shoved away with all his might.

And…

_‘Stay strong, Shoma.’_

_‘You are braver than me.’_

_‘I knew there was a reason I always I liked you.’_

_‘Chin up, little Shoma.’_

_‘You’re winning today. Whatever happens out there.’_

_‘Good luck to you, young man.’_

_‘_ _¡_ _Suerte, Shoma!’_

When he looked up again, Shoma saw other faces in front of him.

The smiling faces of friends and rivals alike.

As he skated out onto the ice, he smiled back at them.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A free skate and its aftermath. And also: sleepy Shoma.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am repeating myself, but comments would be really nice :-) Tell me what you think, even if you didn't like it all that much.

The landing of the first quad, the Flip, wasn’t quite clean, but it felt more like getting the last jitters out of his system.

Shoma was in command of himself.

He wasn’t losing himself in the music today, the music was already a part of him, like a current running through him.

There was no need to rely on the hundreds or thousands of repetitions every movement had been through before this moment, at least it didn’t seem like it. It all fell naturally into place, making him feel like he was doing something completely new, but something well-familiar at the same time.

The jumps came easily after that first one; not out of nowhere to him, of course – he placed them somewhat automatically, and at the same time very consciously – but certainly to the audience, more than one collective gasp reaching him before applause followed. Quad, and quad, and the triple axel combination, and a triple Lutz, just to catch his breath.

Then, the last quad, the Toe, in combination, no less.

It didn’t feel quite right in the air, but Shoma hung onto the landing with a sudden fury, and put a perfect triple Toe on the end.

_You will not see me fall today._

Almost too much speed for the step sequence, and certainly a bit too much going into that last spin, but he remained in control of it, only feeling a little more dizzy than usual when he moved his arms into the final posture, the music inaudible at this point over the noise of the crowd.

With the short program, he’d felt like someone had suddenly turned the volume up, but that wasn’t the case now. It was all coursing through him already, like the music had been – the energy of the crowd, the noise, the palpable feeling of relief that hung over the room, which certainly wasn’t only coming from him.

Scott had been right. They had wanted him to do well.

It was a surreal moment, to raise a fist in a gesture of, if not necessarily professional victory (that needed to be determined, still), then certainly personal victory.

Shoma saw the camera arm move, clearly because they wanted to zoom in for a close up of his face, and, perhaps for the first time ever, he wholeheartedly welcomed it.

He raised his head slowly, staring straight into the lens, and gave a defiant nod.

The audience reacted with catcalls and even more deafening cheers.

He was already dreading the moment of coming down from this high – with everything else going on right now, it would probably not be pleasant.

But for now, he felt great.

He bowed several times, under a rain of flowers and stuffed animals, waved to the audience, hugged Mihoko, who just shook her head at him and smiled broadly, an expression of disbelief on her face, apparently at a loss for words.

He’d barely sat down in the Kiss & Cry when there was a huge reaction from the audience. Shoma looked at the monitor just in time to see, in the playback of his skate, Javi, leaning forward in his seat, his expression one of anxious concentration, his hands clutching a baseball cap.

Shoma could do nothing to stop a delighted smile from spreading over his face, and, of course, the next thing he knew, they had a split screen up on the big monitors hanging over the rink, and the audience cheered again when seeing how he reacted.

Embarrassed, he looked to the floor for a second, but then up again, into the camera.

There was nothing to be embarrassed about, really.

The playback was coming to a close, showing his defiant nod into the camera in the end, and Javi again, standing in the crowd, applauding wildly, tears swimming in his eyes.

For a brief moment, Shoma wished this could be a private moment, wished to be the only one to see that expression, instead of thousands in this stadium, and millions around the world. It was a silly notion, of course. Without all those people, the moment wouldn’t even have existed.

He smiled into the camera as brightly as he could.

Embarrassed or not, overwhelmed or not, he would be doing this right.

“Thank you, Javi,” he said, “and thank you everyone who had a kind word for me today.”

He greeted his parents, and Itsuki, and wanted to say something else, but was interrupted by the usual ‘The scores please for…’. He’d honestly half forgotten that this was coming.

They were good. Not crazily good, not world-record good like yesterday (had that really been yesterday? It seemed ages ago), but a new PB on the total, and ‘currently in first place’.

Mihoko reminded him with a whispered word that he should gesture for the audience to calm down for the next skater, and Shoma did so readily. He knew and hated the feeling of skating for an audience that wouldn’t stop cheering for the previous guy.

In the green room, he shook hands with Nathan and, he was pleased to see, Jason, who hadn’t made the last group but had, from the way they were sitting, obviously skated so well he’d overtaken his teammate. Both of them were looking at him with a strange expression, like he wasn’t quite human, maybe, and Shoma wondered if he should be offended, until he realised they were just impressed by his skate.

He settled in for the long, long wait.

Yuzu was last to skate, and when his turn finally came, Shoma was still in first place, leading by a comfortable margin. Almost as if no one dared to skate as well as him today. Well, if that was the case, Yuzu certainly wouldn’t be the one to subscribe to such a notion.

Halfway through, Shoma resigned himself to silver, yet again, because if Yuzu had started incredibly strong, chance was he would be continuing that way. But then he overrotated his quad Salchow, the landing anything but clean, and stumbled on a triple Flip, of all things, and Shoma thought that, perhaps, with his lead from the short, there was still some hope. Yuzu would probably be getting better GOEs than him on his other jumps, no matter how much Shoma had worked to improve, to relearn, to eliminate the problems he’d known were there. Perhaps it would come to the component scores as a deciding factor, and Shoma didn’t know how he could have done much better there… Oh, it was pointless to speculate.

But, at least, it had passed the time.

He narrowed his eyes at the screen as the numbers came up, his heart beating wildly.

It was close. So close.

But in the end, it was enough.

Enough for Shoma.

The audience groaned when Yuzu hid his disappointed face in his hands, but went crazy barely a few seconds later, when the camera was on Shoma, broadcasting his overwhelmed, completely baffled expression for the whole world to see.

Yuzu was, as always, more okay with the theory of someone else winning than with the reality of it, but, somewhere in the blur that was the medal ceremony, he told Shoma he was proud of him, and that was already more than could have been expected.

Way more than could have been expected was hearing Yuzu say, in the media madness right after the ceremony:

“Of course I’m not happy I lost. But I am happy he won. There can only be one reason why you are trying to talk to me first instead of the champion right now, and I do not like it.”

It was true, Japanese media seemed reluctant to approach their world champion – Shoma had of course given his winning interview with Canadian TV before the ceremony, but afterwards the first ones to talk to him were also Canadian, and American – and there’d been a Spanish reporter, as well. The interpreter that had been there earlier for the winner’s interview wasn’t around anymore, but Shoma managed to deal with the English questions quite well by now, and sometimes even was allowed to answer in Japanese if he asked for it. It was kind of fun to see the frantic telephone calls of “Can we subtitle it before it’s broadcast?”

He told the Spanish woman to speak Spanish with him – “Lentamente, por favor” – which of course led to her being delighted and asking him whether he was learning Spanish for Javi. In his slow, heavily accented Spanish, he explained that he would not be answering any questions about his boyfriend, but then added anyway,

“…pero claro que sí.”

The woman smiled at him as if he was the cutest thing she’d ever seen, and Shoma would have been annoyed by that, usually. But it was a pleasant contrast to the stares he was still getting.

After Yuzu’s pretty direct rebuke, the Japanese reporters dutifully talked to him as well, and even if the conversations felt a bit awkward, a bit stilted, he wasn’t even getting any weird questions.

 _They haven’t been shunning me because of prejudice, they just don’t know how to deal with me_ , Shoma thought with sudden insight, and from there on in he had to stop himself from smiling, the whole situation having become completely hilarious to him.

Of course, he heard the question ‘How do you feel about winning gold?’ more than once, and every time he answered it in the same way.

“I feel great about my skate. This,” he held up the medal, “is an added bonus.”

“I feel great about my decision,” he didn’t say, because he wanted to keep his private life as private as possible, after all, but he knew it was audible in his voice.

He didn’t want to think about what would have happened had his skate been a disaster. He liked to believe that it wouldn’t have made him regret his decision even for a second, but he wasn’t sure he could trust himself on that. He was glad he hadn’t needed to test that theory.

Shoma told himself firmly to stop berating himself for hypotheticals – he had always been good at that, had always been good at finding imperfections in himself. But this was as perfect as it got. He’d done the right thing, and then he’d also won, fair and square.

Because nothing could stay perfect for long, the reporter in his last interview, an ex-skater from Japan he had always gotten along with rather well, and who was treating him pretty normally even today, asked, an apologetic look on her face,

“How do you feel about the fact that two of your sponsors decided to drop you, following your coming out?”

Shoma stared at her numbly.

Nothing better than to hear something like that while being on TV.

Dimly, he recalled a media training they’d sat through once at the JSF and said, slowly,

“I cannot comment on something I was unaware of until now.”

The woman, who was standing with the back to the camera, holding out the mic, was actually looking guilty upon learning this, and mouthed a ‘sorry’ at him.

Shoma tried to get his bearings.

“However, I would say that I can only act responsibly, and do my job. And I’m sure I have done both.”

The reporter agreed solemnly, and that was that.

But what a way to end it.

And of course it wasn’t over yet, there was a small medal ceremony to attend still, with more questions to come, and with more reporters, not all of them as familiar and respectful as the TV interviewers were (almost always the same ones, most of them ex-skaters).

Mihoko was at his side this time, as soon as the last interview finished.

“I’m sorry you had to hear that from her,” Shoma blinked at her, slowly, his mind sluggish when he made the effort to catch up to what Mihoko was talking about, even if the conversation she was referring to had only come to a close seconds ago, and why…

 _Oh_. This was the adrenaline crash he’d expected, of course hitting him even harder than usual after the amount of stress he’d been under.

Mihoko recognised the signs, and led him away by the arm.

The last thing Shoma knew was that she sat him down on a chair somewhere, and told him quietly that she would stay with him until the small medal ceremony.

 

~---~

 

Shoma woke slowly, to a hand on his shoulder shaking him awake.

He blinked and looked into Javi’s smiling face.

He blinked again, to make sure he wasn’t dreaming anymore.

“Hey, champ,” Javi said, the words sounding familiar, but why?

“Time for another medal, and more questions.”

It was entirely possible that Javi expected a reply, but Shoma could do nothing but smile at him sleepily, always slow to come back to reality after a nap cut short.

“Where…?” he began, starting to take in his surroundings. He was sitting on a chair. In a corridor. The corridor that led to the locker rooms, if he wasn’t mistaken.

“Did I fall asleep here?”

Javi laughed at him.

“I think so, yes. Mihoko was here to stand guard before I arrived.”

From one moment to the next, Shoma felt wide awake. The corridor to the locker rooms.

“How many people saw…?” he started with a groan, and Javi grinned.

“Well, your fellow skaters, of course. And some of the coaches came through, as well, I think. I might not have been the only one taking a picture of our sleepy little world champion.”

It was not as if Shoma had forgotten about the title, not really, but hearing it said out loud made it real again.

“You’re here,” he suddenly said, stupidly, and threw his arms around Javi.

Yet again, Javi chuckled, the sound palpable where his head was buried in the crook of Shoma’s neck.

“Safe to assume you’re completely awake now? Because we should be on our way.”

“In that case, not sure I am.”

Just staying like this a few minutes longer would be nice. But if he had to go, at least Javi was coming with him. _Hm_. There was something about that…

“You want to come with me?” he asked, aghast, when he realised what the problem with that might be.

“They will all go completely crazy!”

Javi nodded, grimacing a little.

“Yeah. I had quite a bit of trouble getting through the crowd after the ceremony…”

“Oh shit, are you all right?”

Shoma hadn’t even thought about that.

“Do I look like I’ve been damaged?”

Rather comically, Javi stepped back, spread his arms and did a little twirl in front of Shoma.

He didn’t, Shoma had to concede. But it wasn’t like Javi to seek a repeat of the experience – at least he hadn’t sounded and looked like it had been entirely pleasant. On the other hand… of course his boyfriend would be coming with him right now, just as his family would, if they were here.

“You’ll really come with me?” Shoma asked, upon reflection of the matter sounding much more happy about it this time.

“Sure.”

He made it sound like it was no big deal, but Shoma registered that Javi was looking a bit apprehensive.

“No hiding, right?” he added after a beat of silence, and Shoma nodded.

“Let’s go.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Lentamente, por favor” - "Slowly, please"
> 
> “…pero claro que sí.” - "...but yes, of course."


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Words Jason knows in Japanese, an astonishing gesture from the ISU, Yuzu fighting his demons, Shoma and Javi finally alone etc.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where the rating comes in, though maybe an 'M' would have sufficed :-)
> 
> Sorry about the chapter ending, but you might have realised by now that this is a very optimistic story, so don't worry too much.

Javi was leading him to the same improvised press room they’d held the small medal ceremony in yesterday, going in through the side door that led to the part of the room partitioned off by a cardboard wall, behind which a small group of people was waiting, their backs turned to them.

The first one to turn around and spot them was the enthusiastic bronze medallist. Jason Brown took a few steps towards them, a huge smile on his face.

“So, the cute couple’s here,” he said in Japanese, and Shoma, despite the apprehension he felt (somehow, he’d been more calm when he’d had to face things on his own) rolled his eyes. Of course Jason would know how to say ‘cute couple’ in Japanese.

The words made Mihoko turn, as well. She smiled lightly, and Shoma remembered something, nervousness making him speak much less respectfully, much more flippantly than was his wont.

“I think you said you’d stay with me? Unless you have gained the secret ability to swap bodies with my boyfriend, I don’t see how…”

Mihoko interrupted his weirdly-phrased, half-hearted accusation.

“You are not actually complaining about this, are you?”

Despite the effort she made to joke back in an easy tone, there was a strain around her eyes that told Shoma more than he would have liked to know about the stress she was exposed to. He wondered what kind of revelations were in store for him, but Mihoko only turned towards the moderator, the same nice Canadian guy as yesterday, and said in English,

“He’s here.”

All the other heads turned (Yuzu, Brian, the moderator, the medal-awarding judges and officials, and, oh, the interpreter again, that was nice), all eyes straying immediately towards Javi. Javi, who wordlessly squeezed his hand and let go, joining the coaches in going back out of the side door. Shoma knew they would enter again through the other door, to stand at the back of the room, and he waited for a commotion, but the noise level of the chatting journalists did not change.

The moderator took up his microphone, and the whole thing was quite anticlimactic in the end, really.

Even if the journalists present had to be, to some extent, the same ones who had shouted for comment in the morning, they were civilised now, taking their pictures and letting the ceremony unfold as usual. There were camera flashes in the back, when someone spotted Javi standing beside Brian, but, as far as Shoma could see, no one approached them.

The awarding of the medals was a comfortingly familiar routine by now. Shoma smiled almost fondly as he accepted his silver for the free skate. Silver, his faithful companion, even now that he had won gold.

The questions started, and they were all about the competition, Jason actually getting quite a lot of them for his apparently amazing free skate. Shoma made a mental note to watch it at some point.

Then, there it was, the expected,

“A question for Shoma Uno. Through your federation, you released a very personal statement yesterday and – “

Astonished, Shoma watched as the moderator was trying to shut the journalist down. It felt like being cheated out of something that he’d known was coming, and so he said, impulsively,

“Let him talk, please.”

The reporter, an American, thanked him profusely, and went on to repeat his question, finishing quite harmlessly, really,

“ – and I can only imagine the pressure you must have been under since. How did you put all of that out of your mind and skate so well today?”

Shoma made a sign to the interpreter that he’d understood the question, then replied in Japanese.

“I didn’t put it out of my mind, not really. I received so much support over the last day, from my family, from so many friends, from my teammates but also from many other skaters. And from the fans in the stadium. I skated with that. And I’m so very grateful for it.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Yuzu nodding along to what he was saying, then let the interpreter express it in better English than he could.

There was a quick follow-up question:

“What are you planning to do to celebrate tonight?”

“Catch up on some sleep,” Shoma replied, honestly, seriously, and realised only from the slightly disappointed laughter what they might have wanted to hear.

But that was the extent of it. No more personal questions, no invasive questions at all.

Shoma saw Javi and Brian and Mihoko slip out of the door as the moderator was bringing the event to a close, thanking the judges and the medallists; and a minute later, they too were walking off the little stage, back behind the partition.

“That went way better than I thought,” Shoma found himself saying to Jason, who was shuffling along beside him, and who looked just as astonished as Shoma was that he was feeling the need to initiate a conversation. It was just… it made so little sense, when he’d expected madness.

“As I understand it they were threatened by the ISU… to lose…” Jason visibly searched for words in Japanese, “their… press permit… for ISU events if they didn’t behave.”

Oh. Never in a million years would Shoma have thought to count on help from the ISU, of all places.

Jason smiled at his baffled expression, then gave up on Japanese for the time being and switched to slow English.

“I think… Brian may have had something to do with it. I overheard so many forcibly calm or angry phone calls over the last day that I lost count.”

 _All my fault_ , Shoma thought, then reminded himself yet again that he wasn’t responsible for how people reacted. But he felt the need to apologize for having taken Jason’s coach away from him during the competition. Jason only shook his head and laughed happily, echoing Shoma’s thoughts with his reply.

“Don’t be absurd, it was not your fault. And it worked out quite well anyway, didn’t it?”

With a ‘see you later’ he was gone, and Shoma wondered at the hasty departure, until he turned around and saw Yuzu standing behind him, who must have signalled that he wanted to talk to Shoma alone, seeing as he was now pulling him into a quiet corner, where a pitiful-looking potted ficus was living its miserable existence.

“I had time to watch your free skate back during the break just now…”

Shoma knew he was staring at Yuzu as if he was a crazy person. Who else but Yuzu would start analysing before the event was even fully over? Who else had the energy, and the mindset to do that?

“…and this should be yours, too.”

Yuzu made a move as if to put the small gold medal he had in his hands around Shoma’s neck.

Shoma stopped him by holding up both hands.

“What?”

“It was better,” Yuzu murmured stubbornly.

“And I’m not talking ‘given the circumstances, what you did was amazing’-better. Your skate was just better. Objectively. I don’t know what the judges were thinking, or rather I fear what they might have been thinking.”

“That kind of speculation is useless, Yuzu-kun…” he tried, but trailed off.

Looking into Yuzu’s pained, conflicted eyes, Shoma realised with a start that this was more about Yuzu’s personal demons than the scores. He felt bad for having thought earlier, even for a second, that Yuzu was fine with hiding his own sexuality. He was so clearly tormented by it.

“Yuzu-kun…” he started again, slowly, and he noted with amazement how Yuzu understood immediately that they were not talking about the scores any longer. Apparently, he had waited for Shoma to read between the lines. Good thing he was getting much better at that.

 _Alright, here we go_.

“You’re not thinking about…?”

He chickened out on the words, just in case he was reading this all wrong.

“How could I not? Now that you’ve done this?”

 _Oh well._ This was definitely a bit too big to handle for him, Shoma thought desperately. Hadn’t Yuzu gotten the memo about going to somebody, anybody else with his problems?

There was at least one thing he could, and should, say.

“You should talk this over with… with your coach, I think. And your parents, definitely.”

Shoma almost smiled at the look of horror he got for the second suggestion, but it was a bit too close to what his own reaction had been to actually elicit mirth.

“But, in any case, no rash decisions, okay? It’s gone well so far for me, but I have no idea yet what Mihoko’s been keeping from me. I don’t recommend this way of proceeding; some planning would certainly have been preferable. And I would never, ever, have felt able to do this, if it hadn’t been for Javi.”

Shoma hadn’t known that last part was true until he said it.

But there it was.

He concluded quickly,

“So maybe you should determine first if there is something in it for you that will make the whole hassle worth it. Or wait until there is, if there isn’t right now.”

He was beginning to feel like he had talked more during the last day or so than he usually did in a week.

It was exhausting.

Yuzu was mustering him, apparently turning Shoma’s words over in his mind.

“You know,” he said slowly, and with somewhat brutal honesty, “I always thought you were way too serious, that you thought too much for your own good. I’m beginning to really appreciate it.”

Not knowing how to react to such a pronouncement, Shoma stayed silent, and was saved from replying by Javi appearing beside them.

He watched impassively, with a raised eyebrow, as Yuzu launched himself at his boyfriend, hugging him tightly.

A few seconds later, Yuzu pulled back with a ‘sorry’ and a rather sheepish look towards Shoma.

Shoma only shrugged.

“It’s all right.”

They had always been like that, after all, and the feeling of jealousy towards Yuzu had disappeared almost entirely right at the moment when Yuzu had called Javi his ‘brother’.

Yuzu looked grateful, and Javi smiled and placed a quick kiss on Shoma’s cheek.

“Let’s get out of here, shall we?”

They said goodbyes to a few people, then were led by Brian towards the same side door they’d escaped through yesterday, Mihoko joining them as well.

“I have informed your bodyguards this time, Yuzu, so they won’t go mildly ballistic, like yesterday,” Brian said as they walked over to the car and had to get in rather quickly, because some lingering fans had spotted them, and no one was in the mood to deal with that.

“Yeah, I know, sorry I forgot,” Yuzu giggled, sounding not sorry at all.

From where he’d squeezed into the back seat with Javi and Yuzu, Shoma leaned forward and said quietly to Mihoko,

“You’ll have to tell me all the things you didn’t say until now.”

Mihoko half turned in her seat, and replied firmly,

“Tomorrow. After the gala practice, if you want. Most of it has resolved itself by now, anyway.”

She handed him his phone back, but Shoma kept it turned off for now.

Brian sighed as he arrived at the backside of the hotel, which, today, wasn’t as reporter-free as it had been yesterday.

But Yuzu’s bodyguards were there, as well, so it was fine, except for the pictures they were snapping of Javi being among the group of them walking into the hotel.

“When’s the dinner?” Shoma asked, feeling exhaustion deep in his bones.

Mihoko smiled, happy to deliver good news.

“I thought you’d forget, with everything. It’s tomorrow, after the gala.”

Shoma stared at her, incredulous.

“I can sleep now?”

They all laughed at him.

“Yes. Don’t forget the gala practice at 8:30 tomorrow morning, though.”

He nodded dutifully, and then they all went towards the elevators. No one commented about Javi still being among the group, and no one commented about Javi getting off at the same floor as Shoma.

Javi followed him into the room. Shoma felt duty-bound to point out once again that he would fall asleep right away.

“I know,” Javi said with the slightest of smiles, and a kiss to Shoma’s forehead. _Oh_ , that was nice.

“Can I stay, though?”

Shoma only nodded.

He had not undressed in front of someone outside of the context of a locker room since he was a little child, but was too tired to think much about it. Before he went for a shower, he threw sweatpants at Javi, which he managed to put on, but which, even if they were long for Shoma, looked comically short on him.

“Are you laughing at me?”

“Maybe a little,” Shoma murmured, and turned Javi towards the mirror, the reflection startling a laugh out of him, as well.

They took turns in the bathroom, Javi grateful for one of the wrapped toothbrushes the hotel provided. When Javi reappeared, Shoma was already nodding off. Dimly, he noticed Javi’s weight settling on the bed beside him, and a blanket being thrown over him.

“Sleep well, champ,” came a quiet whisper, and Shoma would have liked a hug, or at least an arm around his shoulder, but he was asleep before he’d found the words to ask for it.

 

~---~

 

He woke in darkness, with a distinct feeling that it had to be the middle of the night, to an eerie light and a crackle of sound.

“What…?” he groaned, before he’d had time to be alarmed by the situation. There was an immediate “sorry” from Javi, who turned away from the opened mini-bar, which explained the weird, bluish light.

“I got hungry, haven’t eaten since lunch. Didn’t want to wake you.”

Shoma blinked, feeling astonishingly not at all groggy anymore, and said, gesturing into the darkness,

“I have snacks in that bag over there.”

He, too, hadn’t eaten anything since lunch, he realised.

Javi still looked a little caught in the act, and Shoma had to smile at the picture he made, an opened bag of chips in his hand, backlit by the small fridge.

“Let’s eat something, then,” he decided, switched on a bedside lamp, gestured for Javi to bring over the bag, and upended it on the bed.

Chocolate, sweets, dried fruit, protein bars, smoothies and the like tumbled merrily onto the covers, and they each chose something. They ate in silence, sharing the occasional grin at the weirdness of the situation.

When they went to the bathroom to brush their teeth again afterwards, Shoma was stricken by how comfortable, and weirdly domestic the whole thing felt.

Coming back out into the room, the clock on the wall said 00:36, and Shoma wasn’t sleepy at all anymore.

He looked over at Javi, and caught him in a look of his own, that sent all thoughts of ‘domestic’ flying out the window.

_Alright, then._

A small smile spreading on his lips, Shoma stepped close, looking up.

“What are you thinking about?” he murmured, his tone making it clear that he already had a pretty good idea.

Javi responded with a kiss.

There was an intent behind it that had never been there before, or at least it had never been that pronounced, and Shoma made a little sound in the back of his throat, his hands coming up to clutch at Javi’s back, fisting in the thin fabric of the t-shirt he was wearing. Javi’s hands landed squarely on Shoma’s ass, moving up and disappearing under the waistband of his sweats.

Shoma moaned into the kiss, as a thrill went through his body. This would be quick.

He broke the kiss, tugged at Javi’s t-shirt, then let Javi pull it off himself in the interest of efficiency, did the same thing with his own.

And then he stopped.

Breathing harshly, he just looked.

He felt… aroused, but suddenly awkward. Unsure of how to proceed.

But Javi smiled and closed the distance between them again, head bowing down, lips kissing at the juncture of neck and shoulder, fingers roaming over Shoma’s chest.

“Okay?” he murmured, as he slowly went to his knees, looking up.

Shoma looked back, a bit overwhelmed.

“I’m certainly not going to stop you.”

Javi smiled, or rather smirked contentedly, his fingers at the waistband of Shoma’s sweats again, this time pulling them down.

“Fuck.”

The word rang out loudly in the room, because apparently he’d said it, as Javi took him in his mouth, before Shoma even had had the time to feel awkward again. He shivered, half from the cool air around him, half from the sensation, the heat that enveloped his erection.

Shoma’s thigh muscles ached from skating, and they would give out at some point, but he had been right, this wouldn’t take long, not with Javi’s hands settling firmly once again on his bare ass, not with the way Javi was using his mouth, sucking, swirling his tongue. It was new, and unfamiliar, and fucking great. Shoma had to hold back so as not to thrust, needed an anchor, let his hands tentatively settle in Javi’s short locks. And then Javi was pushing himself a bit further down than before, and --- _oh_.

Much too soon, the world was reduced to a gradually slowing, endlessly satisfying pulse.

He didn’t realise he was swaying on his feet, coming down from his orgasm, but Javi got up rather hastily, and held onto him.

“Sleepy again?” he murmured, and Shoma shook his head in mute protest. He was sleepy, but –

“You,” his voice was hoarse, “I want to…”

“That can wait,” Javi assured him quietly, but Shoma heard the strain in his voice, heard that the words cost him.

“No, it can’t,” he decided, “but… give me a minute.”

“Anything,” Javi whispered, and the weird thing was, Shoma was inclined to believe him on that.

For a while longer, Shoma leaned his relaxed body against Javi’s tense, tightly-wrought one, then he slid down to his knees, warning,

“I might be bad at this.”

“You haven’t…?” Javi trailed off mid-sentence, his eyes wide, the pupils blown.

“Not this.” Shoma said with a smile, ignored the “You don’t have to…” and tried to copy as best he could what Javi had done before. He had wondered, idly, now and then, alone in his bed, whether he would like this or not. Now, he was determined to love it, because it would make Javi feel good, and he wanted to be the one responsible for it.

It was such an intimate act, both participants vulnerable in some way, and Shoma really liked that about it, however weird and unsure he felt for a while. Earlier, his eyes had fluttered shut at some point, but Javi kept looking at him, and Shoma kept glancing up, conscious of the picture he must be making. And seeing Javi trying to hold back was maybe the best thing about it.

He was unsure what made him do it, because he had no idea whether it would work, but before he knew it, Shoma had pulled off and said, his voice grating hoarsely,

“You can move a bit, if you’re careful.”

And he went back to his task, heard Javi groan, felt him push in just a little. That… apparently his body had been trying to tell him that he would like it, because that was… he didn’t know what that was, but it was all good. Even when Javi pushed a little too far, and Shoma had to prevent himself from gagging, it was more exciting than uncomfortable, was enough to make him forget everything else – the worry about doing it wrong, the ache of his knees on the carpeted floor, his tiredness.

Javi was trying to say something, was pulling him off, and Shoma was disappointed, until he realised that Javi was going to come, that Javi was being considerate. He’d somehow guessed that Shoma really wasn’t all that sure about swallowing yet.

“So close,” Shoma was able to pick out in the incoherent amalgam of words falling out of Javi’s mouth, and, acting again on instinct, he got up, and pushed him backwards, onto the bed. Javi went willingly, let himself be manhandled, falling onto his back with a moan, and Shoma liked that as well, to take decisions that way. He filed away the thought for later, and put a hand to Javi’s straining erection. It only took a few strokes, and then come was spurting, running over his hand and pooling on Javi’s belly. Shoma watched for a second, strangely fascinated, before he looked up.

Javi had his eyes closed, his mouth half-opened to take in big gulps of breath.

He was beautiful.

After a while, he opened his eyes and caught Shoma staring.

A lazy smile spread over Javi’s lips.

Then, a broad grin.

“Yeah, I know, messy,” he said, his voice going higher with laughter, and Shoma realised he was holding the hand he’d used slightly away from himself.

Embarrassed, Shoma found himself some tissues, feeling Javi’s eyes following him as he moved through the room. He handed the tissue box to Javi, who cleaned himself up, but kept looking at him. Shoma looked away.

“Have you…did you…I mean, was this…?” Javi started, then fell silent. Shoma could make an educated guess to what he’d wanted to ask.

“Yes, I have had sex before. No, I hadn’t done this before. Yes, I liked it.”

“Hey, hey, all right,” Javi muttered, clearly thrown by his defensive tone. Shoma heard him get up and put the tissues away, and then he sat himself down on the edge of the bed beside him, leaning into Shoma’s side after a slight hesitation.

“What got into you there?”

Shoma was acutely aware of the way their arms touched, skin against skin. It was a little exhilarating, but mostly comforting, that warmth beside him.

He didn’t want to ask, but couldn’t stop himself either.

“Was this… okay?”

Javi sat up straight, his hand grasping Shoma’s shoulder.

“Way more than okay, how can you… Look at me.”

Shoma turned his head automatically, and… oh. Even in the half-darkness, or perhaps precisely enhanced by it, he saw the way Javi’s eyes shone when he looked at him.

As soon, as crushing, as inexplicable as his insecurity had been, it was gone just as soon, gone in that instant.

Javi was looking at him like…

Shoma kissed him before he could finish that sentence in his head. Because it was too soon, his mind insisted.

That was a futile effort, though, when his heart had already taken the leap.

 

~---~

 

Despite their exertions during the middle of the night, Shoma woke well-rested, and very early. He looked at Javi’s sleeping form, the sheets only half-covering his bare shoulders, and smiled.

Whatever the world had decided to throw at him, this was his, and his alone.

And it was probably time to find out exactly what the world had thrown at him.

He switched on his phone, glad it was on silent when he saw the flood of messages pop up. He ignored all of them and googled his name, clicked on the ‘News’ section before he could stop himself.

‘Shoma beats Hanyu’ was the first headline he stumbled upon, and they continued in that vein. Yuzu had to be, at the very least, part of the story. That was alright with Shoma. He’d expected other headlines.

Hesitating only slightly, he opened a few tabs to look at more than the titles.

The articles were all similar. There was one paragraph on his ‘coming out’, sometimes only a sentence or two, those swarming with words like ‘upheaval’, ‘turmoil’, ‘caused quite the stir’, but most of them openly criticising the tabloid that had set the process in motion. Many mentioned the sponsors that had dropped him, some critically, some refraining from passing judgement on that matter. They’d tried to reach other skaters for comment. Most of them had declined. Daitsuke Takahasi was quoted, though, saying…

‘Please tell me this is not your main story. The man has just set a world record and won a world title.’

Shoma grinned and told his wildly beating heart to slow down.

He looked more specifically for anglophone news, and, no surprise there, the Americans had less compunction about talking about his coming out, quite often putting it in the headline together with his gold win. He conceded that it made for an interesting story, the kind journalists loved and people would want to click on.

They’d asked Adam Rippon for comment, who wasn’t at worlds this year, and therefore available, and was being nice, but a bit exasperated (‘Honestly, I think a straight skating couple might be more newsworthy at this point. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that quite a few people in this sport are gay; and sometimes I’d really like to say: get over it.’)

And they were also quoting Johnny Weir, of course, who pretty emphatically had the same opinion as Yuzu about the free skate score. Shoma wasn’t sure he liked this, still didn’t really want to believe they were right, even though it wouldn’t be all that surprising. If they were right, it was important to talk about it, he supposed. One could only hope that wouldn’t get ugly.

CBC, meanwhile, was thankfully, and rightly, focusing on the great reaction of the audience, and had gotten ahold of Jason who’d stated, with his characteristic exuberance “I’m so happy for them.”

Shoma smiled despite himself, then sighed and looked for the article that had started it, wincing at the title he’d known about but not yet seen in writing. Reading about winning the world championship had definitely been nicer.

It was disconcerting, seeing the photographs of him and Javi eating ice cream, getting out of the rink, walking down the street, hand in hand (okay, that picture was taken from far away, but how exactly had the JSF thought that this was deniable?). In the one from the corridor, the blurry picture of their hug, Shoma was only identifiable by his costume, completely enveloped in Javi’s arms, and he did not did not did not want the world to see this. Sure, they hadn’t been behind closed doors, but they hadn’t been exactly in public either, and somehow this was more than Shoma was comfortable showing. He didn’t know for certain why that was; holding hands could have been called more revealing, and he’d hugged Javi beside the rink last year, where at least part of the audience would have seen it, but that had been during a competition, and on that count alone it had seemed different.

Maybe his reaction wasn’t completely logical, but it was the way Shoma felt. He used to be very harsh with himself, preferring things to always make sense in his mind. But, however much he valued reflexion, he had begun to learn more and more that the way he felt was something valid as well, wasn’t to be dismissed outright.

The article featured the Olympic hug, of course, and there were stupid insinuations about that, about Yuzu, and then there was an old picture from Skate America of him laughing with Jason, and wow, they’d been intent on dragging every other skater he’d ever stood beside or looked at into this. Bile rose in his throat, anger mounting. Could it get any worse, if he scrolled to the comment section?

It could.

Overwhelmingly, people were angry at the article, called for respecting Shoma’s privacy, but there were so many, so many cases where it sounded very wrong. They seemed in denial, making it quite clear that the JSF had not been wrong after all about the possibility of just dismissing the pictures. There were a few homophobic insults here and there, but really not that many, and he’d expected those. He hadn’t expected people saying ‘this isn’t Shoma’, even when others pointed them to the official statement.

Numbly, Shoma lifted his head from his phone, staring at the wall, which was adorned with a sunny picture of Montreal’s skyline.

With all evidence pointing them to the contrary, they were denying a fact of his existence.

Suddenly, the feeling of support from the public was tainted; the memory of cheers sounded shrill in his mind.

Had those people actually accepted him, or had they deluded themselves into seeing someone who wasn’t there?

For the first time since this all started, Shoma felt desperate.

Helpless.

Powerless.

He hid his face in his hands and tried with all his might not to cry.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The complicated relationship-stuff, good and bad surprises, and time to laugh again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, last chapter. Thanks to everyone who made it this far, and especially a big thank you to the amazing people who commented and left kudos :)
> 
> Epilogue tomorrow, and that's it.

His alarm rang.

It was a cheap plastic thing that Mihoko had found him when he’d decided to go without his phone.

Shoma silenced it immediately, not caring if he broke it, but Javi was already stirring.

Even though he felt the urgent need to hide his face, Shoma stayed frozen to the spot. He watched as Javi smiled before opening his eyes, seemingly already aware of where he was.

Then, his eyes blinked open, focused on Shoma.

The words ‘Good morning’ died halfway-through, the smile wiped from his face, and Javi was scrambling up, reaching for him.

“What happened?”

Shoma shook his head, not knowing what to say. Javi took the phone out of his unresisting hands, and hugged him, a faint smell of sweat enveloping Shoma. It wasn’t unpleasant, and the touch of skin on skin was anything but. It calmed Shoma at least a little.

“It’s like they’re denying that I even exist, that somebody like me exists.”

Javi made an inquisitive noise, and Shoma began to explain. And while he was at it, he also mentioned how, even with all the messages he’d been getting, quite a few members of team Japan had stayed completely and utterly silent. Javi nodded, and berated him for googling himself, and held him tight, and looked a bit helpless.

“What can I do?” he asked, and Shoma didn’t even think about an answer. Hearing the question, he realised with a start that, yet again, Javi was asking about him, being there for him, going along with him. Meanwhile, Shoma had no idea what had happened to Javi over the last day, while they’d been apart.

He latched onto that.

It would be good not to think about himself right now anyway.

He asked, feeling selfish and guilty about not having done so before.

But Javi just shrugged.

“It’s all fine. My friends have always known. Some of them send congrats, by the way, they want to meet you.”

He smiled a little, and added, more seriously,

“There was a bit of press coverage in Spain, but not a lot, so they have no reason to be worried. Oh, and I got a call from the federation, because they wanted a confirmation, and apparently would have liked a heads up, but no one really had a problem with it. Though I refrained from googling myself, so who knows what people are saying about me.”

Shoma heard the slight admonishment in his tone, but he knew he couldn’t have acted differently. He’d needed to know.

“I never would have thought I would feel the urge to step right in front of a camera an kiss you,” he said quietly, a bit bitterly. Despite himself, he was circling right back to the issue of denial, and how to combat it.

Javi’s hand came up to the side of his face, fingers caressing his cheek slowly.

“I think I’d prefer not to do that. But I would, if you really wanted me to.”

That was a bit scary, Shoma thought. He felt like maybe he had a little too much power over Javi.

“No, no, I don’t think so. It shouldn’t matter to me, anyway, what they think.”

There was a wistful smile spreading over Javi’s face, his thumb still stroking Shoma’s cheek.

“Oh, I understand why it does. You put yourself out there, they could at least fucking respect that.”

He sounded pretty angry and, paradoxically, Shoma now felt the need to defend those people, his people.

“They’re just not used to it. This is just… new. Not done. And then I had to go ahead and confuse them entirely by declaring myself ‘bisexual’. Couldn’t even have called myself homosexual, at least people would have had more of a concept for that.”

Surprisingly, the words didn’t come out all that bitter. A bit sarcastic, but that was it.

Javi was looking at him strangely.

“You can be angry about this, you know,” he said slowly, but he sounded much calmer about it himself already.

“That wouldn’t help.”

In his mind, Shoma had known that, but he needed to say it. Unlike most people, he almost never felt the need to ‘vent’, in order to get rid of his anger. He preferred to rationalise it away for the most part, and saying out loud what he knew to be true was as good a way as any to achieve that.

The look on Javi’s face changed, but Shoma couldn’t say exactly how. There was a lot of warmth in it, all of a sudden, that much was certain, but then it also had this strange, almost desperate edge to it.

“I…” he said, but then started again.

“Can I kiss you?”

Shoma just looked at him for a second, baffled by Javi’s need to ask, baffled by the serious tone of his question.

Something about the way Javi was looking at him made him smile, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was.

The smile seemed to be answer enough for Javi, who leaned in for the softest of kisses.

What had he been so upset about earlier?, Shoma wondered somewhere at the back of his mind.

People could think what they wanted, as long as he could have this.

 

~---~

 

They got into a fight over the most ridiculous matter.

Javi had been pulling on yesterday’s clothes, and Shoma had declared that a problem. He did not want the reporters to see him leave the hotel that way, confirming beyond all doubt that he’d spent the night.

It exasperated Javi, who grumbled about not being able to make clothes appear magically, and added that if they saw him enter in the evening and leave in the morning, it didn’t make a difference if they also saw him leave in yesterday’s clothes. On top of it, he wanted to accompany Shoma to his gala practice anyway, and didn’t get why they had to go there separately.

Shoma accused him of liking the media attention because he just couldn’t understand what else could push Javi to propose something like that, and Javi declared him a hypocrite for always talking about ‘not hiding’, but wanting to hide this. Shoma said something about Javi not respecting him and his need for privacy, and Javi asked whether he was ashamed of him all of a sudden, and…

Perhaps it was just that their nerves were fraught after everything that had happened in general, and after Shoma’s rather unpleasant start to the day in particular, but, even if Shoma didn’t yell, and Javi only yelled a little bit, it was quite horrible.

_Maybe I don’t understand you after all_ , Shoma thought with a sudden desperation that hurt from the inside.

The harsh words had petered off, and they were only staring at each other now, their breaths audible in the quiet room, standing at opposite sides of the bed, Javi only half-dressed, his shirt in his hands. Shoma hung his head, not wanting to look at him and be tempted to find his lost expression and partially clothed state endearing.

Some of the things that Javi had just said had been so… how could he think that way?

_This is all going wrong._

_This is bad._

_It was a mista–_

_Don’t even think it._

Out of the blue, Javi gave a dry little laugh. Not a very happy laugh, but a laugh nonetheless. Shoma’s head snapped back up.

“I’ve been waiting for this to happen,” Javi said, sounding not calm, exactly, but perhaps resigned.

“What do you mean, ‘this’?”

Shoma’s voice was as unsteady as he felt. Was he… was he breaking up with him now? The thought was… horrible. Simply horrible.

And not because it would all have been for nought, then, no. Just because – because, whatever Javi had just said to him, however irritated he might be, Shoma did not want him to leave.

_Oh, wasn’t this fucked up._

Javi was saying something.

“Sorry,” Shoma interrupted, because he’d completely missed the beginning of the sentence.

“So sorry, but could you repeat…”

He trailed off, feeling bad about not having listened, but Javi didn’t grow angry again.

“I said, it’s just the usual first fight, accelerated a bit by all the shit you have – we have – had to deal with.”

Carefully, Shoma took a few steps around the bed, coming closer.

“The usual?” he asked, slowly.

“Yeah, you know… or perhaps you don’t. Please don’t be offended by this…”

Shoma stopped his approach. That didn’t sound good.

“…but have you been in a relationship before?”

The girl came to mind, the girl he’d dated briefly, and slept with, more because they both wanted the ‘loss of virginity’ part over and done with than because of any deep feelings.

And the one boy that had kissed him during a summer camp.

And the one and only boy Shoma had ever asked out, only to be rather brutally shut down. That had been the moment when he’d first forced himself to reflect on how he felt about coming out, because Shoma had been worried Rin might start spreading rumours about him.

And then, there’d been all his inappropriate crushes on older men.

“No.”

He said it quietly, not really looking at Javi, and unable to decide how he felt about this admission.

Javi closed the distance between them, and very carefully wrapped his hands around Shoma’s upper arms, giving him plenty of time to draw back, should he have wanted to do so.

“So… this is normal. As much as we might think we know each other, there’s always something that throws you. And it’s not always something cute and endearing, or easy to resolve.”

From anyone else, the explanation might have sounded patronising, but Javi looked very earnest, and added, “took me a long time to really understand that.” Shoma felt like he’d known this, intellectually, from books mostly, but not from life. The knowledge hadn’t helped in getting caught in the moment and despairing.

He looked up at Javi and nodded, slowly. Javi continued,

“So I’d say we should talk this over a bit more calmly, but if you don’t leave in a few minutes, you’ll be late.”

_Right_.

“I still don’t get it, but I’ll just… take my time and leave after you, and, oh, I don’t know, steal some clothes from somewhere…”

Shoma shook his head, very seriously, but had to smile at the thought of Javi stealing clothes.

“No, if you want to leave with me, you can.”

He wasn’t all that happy about it, but…

There was a knock. Followed almost instantly by,

“Shoma? It’s Jason.”

Shoma must have looked pretty dumbfounded. Javi was smiling at his expression. A bit cautiously, still, after their argument, but a definite smile.

“Put on your shirt, he does not need to see you half-naked,” Shoma ordered urgently, not thinking about how that might come across. But now, Javi grinned.

“Yessir.”

Shoma mutely shook his head at him, and went to open the door to Jason’s also smiling, but slightly red face.

He was holding out a small sports bag.

“Hey, Shoma. Scott said… well, that Javi might need this. Clothes, I think…”

There was a loud curse in Spanish, something that Shoma didn’t understand. It made Shoma look to the floor for a second, even as he took the bag. Jason had such a comically wide-eyed expression on his face at hearing Javi’s voice, or perhaps at the tone, or maybe he even knew those words, and Shoma was embarrassed, but also needed to hide a smirk.

Javi appeared beside him.

“Um, hi Jason. Sorry. And thank you very much.”

Jason was looking at them, noticing clearly that something was flying over his head when Shoma held the bag out to Javi with a look that said ‘see, I knew this was a good idea’. Javi rolled his eyes at him, but took it.

“Okay, I’m off then. I think most of the others are already downstairs.”

Jason clearly wanted to get out of here. Shoma felt the need to issue a general apology to him for all the awkwardness, but he wisely refrained, only thanked him again, and added,

“We’ll be down in a minute.”

The door had barely closed, when Javi said,

“Just go ahead, I – “

With a sigh, Shoma interrupted.

“I’ll wait for you.”

Somehow, it had been him making decisions from the beginning, and the one time Javi had insisted on something, he’d tried to shut it down. Shoma might not have much practical knowledge about relationships, but the theoretical kind sufficed to know that this way of proceeding was a very bad idea.

So he tried to correct what he could. He’d been plenty uncomfortable over the last days, some of it of his own making. This wouldn’t be so bad, on top of everything else.

Javi looked like he wanted to argue, and he would have been right in pointing out that Shoma was terribly inconsistent this morning, but then, thankfully, he didn’t bother.

God, this relationship-thing was complicated.

 

~---~

 

Mihoko raised her eyebrows at them, and said, directly after her greeting,

“You two are bold.”

It didn’t really sound disapproving, maybe a bit, but more grudgingly impressed. Nevertheless, Javi looked like he wanted to disappear through the floor; even more so than Shoma did.

Shoma refrained from another ‘I told you so’-look towards him, and tried very hard not to think about the fact that all the people looking at him right now thought he’d had sex last night, and that it was true on top of it.

And then, in the end, they were not even spotted coming out of the hotel together. Shoma left in the bus with a whole bunch of skaters, and Javi with Brian in his car, which was still parked around the back.

In retrospect, their fight seemed utterly ridiculous.

Though maybe not useless.

Shoma told himself not to assume too much, not to take too many things for granted. He’d thought he would have been doing that anyway, because this was something unprecedented, but clearly he could do better.

The gala practice was slow to start, no surprise there.

Everybody was horsing around, as usual, and then, of course, they all wanted to talk to Javi, too. Shoma was reminded of old times, as he watched from afar how Javi chatted and joked with everyone by the boards.

Well, almost everyone. With the exception of Yuzu, most of team Japan was keeping a polite distance. While it was true that none of them knew Javi well, Shoma resented the not-so-subtle looks some of them were throwing his way, or Javi’s.

But now that he was in a different mindset than this morning, when he’d mourned the lack of messages of support from that quarter after reading the article, and especially the disheartening comments below it, he wondered if, like with the reporters yesterday, their awkward behaviour meant simply that they didn’t know how to act around them.

Finally, Satoko and Kaori approached him, and Shoma was tempted to assure them that he didn’t bite, and that his sexuality wasn’t catching.

But it turned out he had been reading them completely wrong. Shoma had always been too quick in assuming people thought badly of him in some way. Satoko and Kaori certainly weren’t shy about Shoma’s relationship, quite the contrary. They wanted to tease and ask a hundred questions.

Shoma tried to evade them as best he could, and resigned himself to hearing giggles even at the most innocuous answers he gave.

He was glad when they started to practice the choreo for this afternoon.

Afterwards, he went to the cafeteria with Javi and Yuzu.

People stopped them now and then, many of them congratulating Shoma – because, oh right, yes, he was world champion now, that still surprised him – and so it was that he only really looked at Javi when they were sitting down to eat.

“What’s wrong?” Shoma couldn’t help but ask; their roles suddenly reversed from this morning. There was something in Javi’s eyes that didn’t bode well, and there even were thin lines around his mouth. Hadn’t he assured him that everything was alright?

Javi shook his head, looking a bit baffled that Shoma had picked up on… whatever it was, and Yuzu, clearly in on the matter, added,

“Lunch first.”

Both of them didn’t really seem to enjoy their food.

Afterwards, Shoma looked at them expectantly, and Javi sighed.

“They’re harassing Miki.”

“What?”

What did Miki Ando have to do with any of this?

“Anonymous e-mail, comments on the internet. They’re saying things like that she couldn’t keep her ex-boyfriend straight or some bullshit like that.”

Javi was sounding more and more incensed with every word.

“Why do they always fixate on her? She’s just trying to live her life! And we broke up three years ago.”

“Javi…” Yuzu was saying warningly, because Javi was getting louder. He was speaking English, for Yuzu’s benefit, and therefore would be understood by almost anybody overhearing them.

Shoma, meanwhile, tried to make sense of what he’d heard. The first thing that stuck in his mind was Javi’s tone, eerily reminiscent of the helplessness that he himself had been feeling this morning.

“How do we know this?” he asked the easiest question first, and Javi looked pointedly at Yuzu, who explained that after a TV special about the history of skating they’d done last summer, he’d stayed in contact with Miki. Javi seemed frustrated at having been out of the loop, at not having been the one she talked to.

Well. That was certainly… interesting. Shoma told himself firmly to refrain from speculation, and stay on the topic at hand. However, he couldn’t help but remember the way Javi was always a bit hesitant to talk about Miki.

_No time for this now. Stay on topic._

“Can we do anything about it?” he asked.

“No.” Yuzu said quietly. “Javi has already put out a belated statement on his Twitter.”

 “Won’t come as a surprise to anybody now, but just so it’s official, as well,” Javi grumbled, and then decided, very emphatically, that he should call Miki.

“Javi…” Yuzu was saying once again, in that warning tone. “She knows it’s not your fault. She didn’t even want me to tell you. Do you really think that’s necessary? That it will help?”

Shoma felt a definite twinge of something unpleasant at the thought of Javi calling his ex, but he stomped it out as best he could.

“We have things to talk about later,” he said in Spanish, and Yuzu looked very annoyed at having been cut out in this manner.

Javi had a deer-in-the-headlights-look on his face.

“You’re right, of course. As soon as we get a moment of quiet. Do you want me to hold off on calling – “

“No, go ahead.”

Yuzu looked seconds away from throwing a tantrum.

“Sorry,” Javi said in English, distractedly, and then cursed, realising it was the middle of the night in Japan.

“She’s in France,” Yuzu offered quietly, apparently having resigned himself to the phone call happening, and then Javi was gone.

Yuzu was looking at Shoma, an assessing look.

“I wanted to assure you that you needn’t be jealous, but…”

He trailed off with a shrug.

Shoma grimaced.

“I don’t think there’s reason to be.”

Again, this was something where saying it out loud helped him to convince himself of it. He just didn’t know enough about this to justify it to himself to be jealous.

“And I’m withholding judgement anyway, until I know more about this.”

Now Yuzu was looking at him very strangely. Like he was watching some increasingly fascinating specimen, worth of further study. Shoma felt like a rare, intriguing insect, perhaps.

“Why are people so horrible?” he said, quietly, partly to stop that look, and partly because he had once again found occasion to ask himself that question. He wouldn’t have imagined in a million years that people would find a way to drag Miki Ando into this.

It didn’t demand an answer, that question, and Yuzu didn’t give one.

He just sighed with a pained look, and said nothing, but kept sitting beside Shoma quietly, like the good friend he had become.

 

~---~

 

After the conversation at lunchtime, Shoma wasn’t in the best of moods when he went to talk to Mihoko. She tried to cheer him up by telling him he had new sponsors.

“And, you know what, I think the old ones are seconds away from wanting to have you back. They received a lot of backlash.”

“What else don’t I know yet?”

Shoma was not up for another long, winding conversation. He had talked so, so much during the last days that he wondered how he was even still functioning.

He would get back to Japan and not speak for a week. Except to Javi, perhaps. There was a sharp pain in his heart at the realisation that he would be leaving tomorrow. He would phone Javi, this time round. No way could he be content with text messages anymore.

Mihoko, as always picking up on his mood, told him briefly about a few of the things that had ‘resolved themselves’.

There had been unpleasant calls, a threat of some kind from someone at the JSF, immediately followed up by an apology from someone else, people contacting her with comments about how this wasn’t the right publicity for their sport, a few insulting e-mails from horrible people who’d managed to get hold of her address.

“But a lot of people are trying to thank you, too,” she added, eager to gloss over the nasty parts.

“How many conspiracy theories about how I was forced to do this, or something in that vein?” Shoma asked with a frown.

“Oh, you’ve been on the internet, what did you do that for…. A few. Don’t take them too seriously.”

Mihoko sounded unfazed.

“People always need a little time to adjust their worldview. I’m sure it’s mostly girls who have a crush on you.”

As easy as that. Shoma wished she’d been there this morning, when he’d freaked out. Or maybe not. His stupid brain conjured the image of Mihoko standing beside his bed, with him and Javi in it, and he shuddered and tried to get rid of that truly unpleasant thought.

What was she saying?

Well, it turned out she didn’t have any more grand revelations. Her stress level had mostly, and very understandably, stemmed from the JSF contradicting itself every few seconds, and the ISU meddling, and her trying to keep all the idiocy away from Shoma.

“Oh, one more thing. If I know you even a little, you don’t want to do any interviews about this, but there’s this gay lifestyle magazine that wants to talk to you.”

“Here?”

“No, no, back home.”

“We have a gay lifestyle magazine?”

Mihoko smiled, perhaps a little indulgently.

“I’ve got a friend who works there, you see. She convinced me to at least ask you.”

Shoma frowned at the way she said ‘friend’.

Mihoko raised her eyebrows.

Oh. _Oh_.

“Is everybody in this sport gay and I just don’t know it yet?” Shoma grumbled, trying to play it cool, and Mihoko let her bright laugh ring out. It made Shoma remember the way she lit up when her ‘friend’ came to the rink sometimes.

Wow, how had he been so blind?

Off in his own world, as usual. It was a wonder that he’d managed to find himself an actual boyfriend, with the way he went through life.

“You could have said something,” he said, sounding maybe just a little bit accusing.

“I thought you knew.”

“You of all people should have realised by now how unobservant I can be.”

Mihoko shook her head at his self-deprecating comment, and then left rather abruptly to take a call.

“Sponsors,” she said, and was off, her eyes still laughing at him as she looked over her shoulder briefly in the doorway.

She’d left him with quite a few more things to think about.

Shoma wondered when there would be a moment of respite, of calm, to sort through all of this.

 

~---~

 

The gala certainly wasn’t that moment, and neither was the dinner afterwards, and then Javi and him spent their last evening together talking about Javi’s former relationship with Miki; why he’d wanted to talk to her, what she had once meant and still meant to him.

It was an important, albeit sometimes awkward conversation. Shoma couldn’t help but be curious about other girlfriends (and boyfriends), too, but he would certainly not ask. Maybe Javi would want to talk about them at some point, or maybe not. They only interested Shoma insofar as they had shaped Javi’s life.

Miki definitely had. Had helped shape Javi’s understanding of Japanese people, for better and for worse, with all the experiences she’d had, but had also influenced a hundred other things, from his taste in music to the fact he wanted kids someday – that last one Shoma was hung up on for a second, until he told himself firmly: ‘someday’.

Another thing to think about later.

Miki was the one ‘Prometo’ was about, Shoma knew it without asking. Someone Javi had made promises to, promises that hadn’t quite worked out in the end.

It could end that way with them, too, Shoma thought. But he remembered Javi’s insistence, right at the beginning, that that song should never be about him, and he was hopeful.

And to be hopeful was what life required, after all. To be certain would be just as foolish as to abandon hope.

“Where are you going tomorrow?” Shoma asked, suddenly, shocked that he didn’t even know. There had been so much craziness that some of the most basic things were lost.

His question was followed by a strange pause, and Shoma rolled to his side in order to look at Javi, who was lying beside him on the covers.

When Javi started speaking, it was to the ceiling.

“Well. You know, I can take about two or three weeks off, still, because everyone’s going on holiday now anyway, and then I have to come back to Toronto. I’m doing some clinics with Brian.”

“So…?”

He hadn’t actually answered.

“So…a few days ago… I might have bought myself a plane ticket to Tokyo for tomorrow.”

For a moment, silence reigned, as Shoma processed this.

He looked at Javi, who had closed his eyes, perhaps to hide his expression, but still managed to appear nervous, awaiting Shoma’s judgement.

There was no need to ask why Javi hadn’t told him about it – it was the same reason Shoma hadn’t even asked before.

Too much going on.

Shoma leaned over, half of his weight coming to rest on Javi, and kissed him.

“I’m not presenting you to my parents yet, you crazy person,” he murmured, and leaned back in in time to feel Javi’s lips under his move into a wide smile. Shoma pulled back once more, wanting to see that smile. It moved into a grin, and then Javi was saying,

“I was hoping to find some other things to do, actually, that certainly do not require the presence of your parents.”

“Ugh, you’re terrible.”

“Well, then you have terrible taste.”

There hadn’t been enough time for laughter and silliness over the last few days, Shoma thought, as he chuckled, and delighted in hearing Javi’s laugh again.


	11. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A glimpse into the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, that's it for this time, folks. Thank you to everyone who stayed with this story till the end!
> 
> Just a friendly reminder: comments are always welcome, even months or years after posting ;-)
> 
> Read you next time...

Shoma was quiet and serious most of the time, that would not change. He preferred it that way.

But someone took great pleasure in making him smile and laugh a bit more often than he used to, and he hoped that would never change, either.

At some point, Javi finished the sentence he’d kept interrupting himself with in the beginning, and said “Es que te quiero. Y pienso que siempre te querré.”

_(‘It’s like this: I love you._ _And I think I always will.’)_

Even with how long it had wanted out, Javi looked surprised when the words actually fell out of his mouth.

Shoma was glad for the ‘I think’. It made it just a bit less overwhelming.

From what Shoma had learned, Spanish people were rather free with their ‘te quieros’. But Javi had never said it until now, preferring to whisper “I like you very much”; or, mostly when a little drunk, to use a whole flood of terms of endearment. _Cari_ _ñ_ _o, cari, hermoso, tesoro, peque_ _ñ_ _o_ – Shoma vetoed that last one the first time he heard it, and Javi pouted and assured him with expansive gestures and serious eyes that he wasn’t making fun. Shoma liked Javi a bit drunk, a bit loose. As easy-going and open as Javi was, he usually preferred to remain in control, and could be just as quiet and reserved as Shoma was when it came to the truly important matters.

Javi wasn’t drunk the day he said those words, not even a little.

He’d chosen one of Shoma’s vulnerable moments instead.

After a competition.

If Shoma was a bit shaky even when things had gone great, there wasn’t a word to define his state when things went as terribly wrong as they’d gone today.

There was no excuse, no old injury flaring up, no problems with his skates, only the fact that he’d slept poorly, for no reason, and couldn’t for the life of him find the right moment to jump. In between nasty falls, he still landed cleanly a few times by hanging on with a combination of experience and sheer willpower, and his result was, if certainly not good, then not completely and utterly nightmarish either, but Shoma was fraught, filled with the irrational fear that it would never be any different now.

At some point afterwards, he’d started apologising to Javi, because he was a mess, and was wasting their precious time together.

Javi had started coaching more seriously now, and his schedule wasn’t as flexible as it had been the first few months after they got together. They could only meet a handful of times during the competitive season now. If they were lucky. Shoma was beginning to talk about retirement, and Javi always reminded him gently of the Olympics coming up soon, and that he didn’t want him to have any regrets.

Today, Shoma hadn’t spoken about retirement, but about giving up. Javi had gotten him back to the hotel, had calmed him down by holding on to him and talking to him quietly – small reassuring words in three different languages, whatever came to mind.

Only when Shoma had pulled back, feeling much more like himself again, had Javi made his pronouncement.

“Es que te quiero. Y pienso que siempre te querré.”

“Please don’t ever leave me,” Shoma heard himself blurt out, and felt his face flame at the unnecessary dramatics. His exhaustion was to blame, surely.

_He just told you he loves you, and always will, don’t you think that should be a clue that he does not plan on leaving you?_

He added, a bit more calmly, after a deep breath, forcing himself to look up again,

“It’s just that I love you as well, so that would be a shame.”

Javi’s eyes shone brightly as he pulled Shoma into his arms.

They stood motionless, intertwined, until Javi’s hands began to move, undressing him slowly.

A practiced ease had long since supplanted the occasional awkwardness that had been present at the beginning, and there were no words spoken, as skin was bared, and explored with hands and lips, finding a new reaction now and then, or a delightfully familiar one instead.

Shoma liked to take control in this, and Javi often let him, but in that exhausted state after a competition, he allowed Javi to do that thing he could do so naturally, and had done in so many ways, right from the start.

He let Javi take care of him.

Let Javi lay his tired body on the sheets with the utmost tenderness, let him stoke Shoma’s arousal slowly, but surely.

As Javi began to touch him with slicked fingers, Shoma’s mind drifted a bit, remembering the first time they’d done this, during those three weeks in Tokyo and Nagoya. It still made him smile triumphantly to remember how having to hide from the press had turned into a good memory, because they had taken hours and hours to explore, to learn each other by touch.

That first time, it had been the other way round.

He remembered how Javi had asked “Do you think you could fuck me?”, in a strained voice, but with a small smile on his lips, because he had to repeat himself in English, after Shoma hadn’t understood him the first time. His Spanish language courses had not included those words.

(Though, that was soon remedied, with the way Javi sometimes talked in bed.)

He remembered how overwhelmed he’d been, and how embarrassingly eager, and how Javi had seemed to take pleasure in that, and in telling him what to do.

He remembered, as Javi pushed into him, how he’d done the same to Javi, then and so often since, how it had felt, how it would always feel.

He remembered the indescribable look on Javi’s face.

And then, he stopped remembering, because Javi had a look on his face now that anchored Shoma in the present moment.

And finally, they started to move, and everything was just sighs, and heat, and mounting pleasure.

“I will never, ever leave you.”

Javi whispered the words into his skin afterwards, a belated answer.

Maybe it was foolish, but Shoma – always measured, forever doubtful –  had found a thing to be certain about.


End file.
